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EXCLUSIVE: Interview w/ the LEGEND Mark Connor
17 Plays16 days ago
If there's one podcast you listen to this month, I can't recommend this one enough.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Bonus Episode
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello. This is a special bonus episode of Life's F-ing Nuts. For those of you who've listened to the show before, you know that this has not been an interview format podcast. This has been strictly a show where I tell stories from my life, share lessons that I've learned. And I was kind of bullish and adamant that this was not an interview kind of podcast.
Resisting Interview Format
00:00:30
Speaker
Throughout my time making the shows, I'd often have people say, like hey, look why don't you interview this person, or interview that people person, or mix things up a little bit. like I love your stories, but it would be cool to do some interviews too. I would almost always kind of stubbornly be like, no, like that's not that's not what this show is. At the time, that just didn't seem that appealing to me. I was very clear that I had stuff to get off my chest. There's these stories that I've carried with me over the years, and this podcast was dedicated to telling those stories in the most compelling, relevant ways possible.
Considering Mark Conner's Interview
00:01:09
Speaker
But then, I don't know, a month ago or something like that, this publicist reached out to me and he said, hey, I have a client. His name is Mark Conner. He's got a really interesting life story. He just wrote a book. The book's called It's About Time. Would you be interested in interviewing him?
00:01:25
Speaker
and And the publisher said, I listened to one of your shows. I really liked it. I think this could be a good fit in terms of Mark's life story and is some of his values and and some of the things that you've been talking about in your episodes. So at first I was like, eh, like, no, I'm not into interviews. Then I gave it a little thought and I was like, you know what, this fell into my lap.
00:01:47
Speaker
I might as well just give it a shot, try it out, see how it feels. If I don't like it, I don't like it. Fine, whatever, no problem. And so I scheduled a pre-interview with Mark just to develop a little bit of a rapport and a conversational chemistry.
Mark Conner's Background
00:02:02
Speaker
And he was very easy to talk to. He's done a lot of different things in his life.
00:02:07
Speaker
e was a boxer, an aspiring professional boxer. He actually had one professional bout and he trained his whole life with other professional boxers. He was sparring partner for people who'd go on to become Walter Waite champion of the world and things like that. He is an Irish American, a devout Catholic. He did a lot of work with indigenous spirituality. He befriended close indigenous ah friends and allies in St. Paul, Minnesota. He worked at a shelter, a youth shelter for indigenous youth. He was a writer. He's a writer, published writer, a poet. At one point he went to Seattle and worked on a salmon fishing ship that went up to Alaska.
00:02:52
Speaker
He's been a taxi cab driver, personal security, personal trainer, and editor at a publication or a newspaper or something like that. So he's done a lot of interesting things. And I want to talk quickly about the process of the interview. I'm not a polished, refined interviewer. When I think when I was younger, I kind of felt like, oh, like I could be good at anything in the snap of a finger. Like I could just pick it up very quickly. Now as a 40 year old, I have much more appreciation and respect for craft.
00:03:21
Speaker
and for dedication and for the hours and hours that go into honing one's craft, refining one's craft. I have great admiration for journalists who have perfected the art of of the interview.
00:03:36
Speaker
And I just don't have that experience.
Reflecting on Interview Skills
00:03:38
Speaker
I think I have a natural disposition for for listening, for homing in on the core, the essence of what someone is trying to say and asking provocative questions that can sort of unearth or unlock those interesting answers. I think I have a natural, just the way my brain is wired, the way I've moved through the world.
00:03:58
Speaker
I think there's a natural disposition there. And I have just kind of recreational interview experience. Back in the day, I was, and without even sort of thinking about it or knowing why I was doing it, what was drawing me to it, I would interview my elders. i I did hours of interviews with my grandpa before he passed away, hours of interviews with my great aunt Esther, and I genuinely enjoyed it.
00:04:24
Speaker
i I really did. I'm probably not unique in this, but often you know I'm thinking about my own self and my own worries and my own dreams and my own desires, but that there can be something incredibly transcendent and liberating to put myself aside to the best of my ability for a couple hours and really focus on someone else.
00:04:44
Speaker
really listen as deeply as possible, really be curious, as curious as possible, who this person is, what their story is, what their core essence is. And so I i really enjoyed that as a youngster, especially my interviews with my grandfather. they're They're kind of like gold to me. I still have them on, you know, tiny little, those tiny little, um I don't know, micro cassettes, basically. So I have some sort of recreational experience, I'll say. And and this interview with Mark was very interesting because you know I went in with the intention to listen, like I said, listen as closely as possible to not step on his feet. Because when I was younger, I did sometimes, even though my goal was to fully tune into another person, as a young person, i in some ways I couldn't help but interject myself into the story.
00:05:31
Speaker
or to lead the conversation in a way in ah in a place where I thought it should be led to. I think when I was younger, it just it was hard for me to truly like let go and really be present with where the natural energy was and not have a bias or or like a hidden agenda or a hidden intuition as to how the conversation should go.
00:06:01
Speaker
think now that I'm older, I have much more of an ability to not have to interject, to not have to be central in any kind of way to the story. And so I i sat down virtually with Mark. And I think I did a pretty good job of creating space for him to talk, to explore. I think in an interview it can be easy to like as someone's talking to be kind of thinking about my next question or maybe to like fear, fear running out of things to talk about or fear where the conversation might be going. Like for me it takes some courage
00:06:40
Speaker
to really be present and be with what is and to not know where it's going and to really have a kind of underlying stillness to me as I'm interviewing. And I think I was able to do a pretty good job of that while I was interviewing Mark. like i did i think Also, I think I started out a little stiff, but I loosened up as the time went on.
00:07:01
Speaker
And the more more I loosen up, the more I was able, I think, to be with what was and and sort of have this underlying stillness to me. And it ended up being a very rich conversation for me. I felt like nutrients entering my body just by having this meaningful exchange with this very interesting person. And so that was cool.
00:07:27
Speaker
I will say that, like I said, I'm ah ah not not a polished, I'm an unrefined interviewer who doesn't have a huge amount of experience. So after it was done, and and I listened to a little bit of it after it was done, the raw audio, it was very clear to me that it wasn't a tight interview. you know I probably aired too far on the side.
00:07:48
Speaker
of of having a hands-off approach because Mark's a very interesting guy. It was a great conversation and some of the answers would kind of lose focus a little bit or meander. I think maybe because he's a writer, just the way that he's oriented, he shares a lot of information.
00:08:09
Speaker
a lot of dates and names and things like that, which to me are less juicy, less interesting. Yeah, like i I don't think it was just like an all out great interview. I think there's there's a lot of room for improvement.
00:08:25
Speaker
um I think there were moments when it was when we were both locked in where he was giving relevant, direct, compelling answers and I was asking relevant, direct, compelling questions. But on the whole, I feel like I would need a lot of practice over time to get truly good at interviewing.
Mark's Journey to Achieve Dreams
00:08:43
Speaker
What I found to be kind of the core message of the interview.
00:08:47
Speaker
and And I think it's ah a relevant, interesting message that a lot of people could relate to. I consider Mark like a seeker. He has massive amounts of passion in life. He has like a sense of purpose, a sense of direction, a sense of curiosity. Like I said, he'd done a lot of things, professional boxer, editor of a newspaper, all these things that I already mentioned. But I think the the kind of message that he was giving me and the message about this book that he wrote is that he, for many years in his life, he didn't quite put it all
00:09:29
Speaker
to say, you know, I am going to make my mark. I am going to complete that book. I am going to finish projects. It seemed like he kind of always, I don't know if I would say dabbled because he was very deeply involved with the things that he was doing, but kind of fulfilling his potential for most of his life seemed like just beyond his fingertips. And then his dad died unexpectedly.
00:09:57
Speaker
And after his dad died, he kind of said to himself, like, if I'm a writer, I have to write a book. I have to finish a book. I can't talk just keep talking about it. I can't just keep thinking about it. I can't keep, you know, dabbling and publishing a little thing here and there. Like, I need to do this. I have to stop procrastinating, stop with the perfectionism and take my shot.
00:10:29
Speaker
And that was kind of the core of the interview, this idea that probably most of us, probably majority of us, probably more people than not have dreams, have visions, have desires, have yearnings, have longings, things they want to do, books they want to write, places they want to go, businesses they want to start, and they don't do them.
00:10:54
Speaker
They don't do them. They get stuck on the hamster wheel. They get scared. They're too tired. They don't have enough money. They're too preoccupied. They're too stressed. I think it's a very common phenomenon and I relate to it. And I just I my guess is that in the modern world that a lot of people could relate to that. And I'll say it again. People have dreams, desires, visions, longings, yearnings.
00:11:22
Speaker
inner knowings that they're meant to be doing something and just don't do it. And I applaud Mark for doing it. He went for it. And he wrote, you know, a book that, it's a small book, 86 pages, and it's probably not gonna be on any bestseller lists. The format of it is probably not gonna be for everybody, but he did it. He took his poems, he took his stories, he took narratives from his life and he wove them together He went through the difficult process of fighting through perfectionism, and he did it. He published his book. He did it. And the book is called It's About Time. And that kind of sums it all up, that he said, like it's about time. I got to put this stuff together. I can't just keep dreaming. I can't just take little stabs at it anymore. like I have one life to live. I can't go my whole life dreaming and not
00:12:18
Speaker
completing, not fulfilling those dreams. And so to me, that was kind of the core theme, the core message of of the interview and and a powerful message and an important
Value of Stories from "Nobodies"
00:12:29
Speaker
message. We live in this world where, you know, there's somebodies and there's nobodies.
00:12:37
Speaker
The somebodies you know are major sports athletes, you know professional athletes, or movie stars, or you know podcasts with millions of downloads, or seven, eight-figure business people. Those are the somebodies. And we all kind of acknowledge, we point. so like like They are the celebrities. They are the successful ones. They are the ones worth our attention.
00:13:07
Speaker
They're the ones who we will give the benefit of the doubt to when we read something from them, when we watch one of their shows. We don't we don't nitpick it with a fine tooth comb in the way we would, you know, if a friend wrote a book, quote unquote, somebodies are like anointed.
00:13:26
Speaker
And sometimes it's like luck or chance. To me, Mark's book is, I really enjoyed it. i I read it cover to cover the night before the interview. I stayed up late, I took notes, I i underlined.
00:13:41
Speaker
And it felt like a portal into this person's soul. like I really felt like I knew him. It's a very intimate, vulnerable book. And I thought it was very beautiful. There's seven billion, eight billion people on the planet. and And here's this one tiny person, this one tiny speck of dust, talking about his experience, just putting it on paper. And ultimately, there there might be like ah an overwhelming insignificance to it.
00:14:08
Speaker
You know, he's just one little speck of dust, just like me, just like you, little specks of dust. And there was not, you know, it's it's just, it's not written in a way that would ever be championed by like the New York Times Book Review or anything like that, or would never be in the New Yorker. But that doesn't take, up to me, that doesn't take away the value of it. This idea, ah this idea that something is only worth reading or only Considered real art if it gets the stamp of approval from the New York Times book review or or whatever, you know Whatever media critic of your choice, whatever it is And for me, I kind of think like the gold standard is like New York Times book review for better or worse Whatever that's kind of how I think but I know different people have different things but this idea that unless it's that
00:14:57
Speaker
that it's not worth our time, i think that's I think that's too limited. And I think this idea that there's like the the the somebody class and then the nobody class, and just I think that's too limited. I think i think that's a ah ah creation of this larger kind of capitalist machine. The somebody class and the nobody class. I think Probably most of us have a story worth listening to. Most of us, you know we we are most people have a beauty to them.
00:15:32
Speaker
ah something interesting about them, something rich about them. And so this experience of, you know, really imbibing Mark's book on that night before the interview and then having this long two-hour interview with him, we edited it down so it's not going to be a whole two-hour interview, but it was kind of like this mini little spiritual slash human experience where I just felt Like I felt a hope four for the meaningfulness of the mundane, of the the nobody class. I hope I'm expressing that at least somewhat in a way that's that's graspable, what I'm trying to say here.
00:16:10
Speaker
That's kind of the context for the interview. and yeah minta In general, I hope you enjoy the interesting nature of who Mark is. um and he you know Just one little speck of dust. and Like I said, he probably will not become a New York Times bestseller, but he did it. He wrote his book and he's going to continue to work on on on creating a body of work, ah leaving his mark on this planet. And and i I commend him. I tip my cap to him. I think it's awesome. And I think we also do that. whether Whether we end up on the New York Times bestseller list or not, whether we you know become a ah seven-figure business person or not, I think we all
00:16:54
Speaker
should should live as intentionally as we can to take chances to be who we are. to do the things that are calling us in our heart, to be inspired, to be passionate, to be driven, to live purposefully. I think that's the kind of the whole thing, to live purposefully. So I think Mark is a beautiful example of that, and hopefully as you listen to this interview, that's that's the thing that comes across, this this invitation to dream,
00:17:27
Speaker
to follow through, to live purposefully, to pay attention, to not underestimate the power of your own life, your own experience, your own perception, your own impulses, your own curiosities. Do not underestimate those things. Embrace them. Lean into them.
00:17:46
Speaker
Even though we might be specks of dust on this massive planet with 8 billion specks of dust, there's still meaning. There's still purpose. No matter how insignificant might things might feel at any given moment, I truly believe there is meaning. So that's that's ah that's the message and I hope you enjoy the interview.
Father's Influence on Mark
00:18:15
Speaker
My father died, it was September 30th of 2019. My father and I actually had, we had an argument about 10 years or more earlier. um He was you know giving me a hard time, but you know getting old enough that I should have, if I found my writer, I should have actually published a book by now. When I saw him die, you know I just looked at him and I i thought i've thought of the things I haven't done. I i ah had not accomplished in my life or points I hadn't gotten to. I'd never gotten married, he had kids. He never saw that and he never saw me publish a book. And I just said, I have to write a book, you know, immediately right away. I said that I've got to do that and just stop procrastinating my life. So that's a lot of what the book is about. Taking opportunities in life after my dad died, I said, I got to write the story. And it's not a novel, but it's going to be something that's kind of like a novel. I'm going to just write a story that kind of explains who he is and how important he was in my life.
00:19:13
Speaker
and kind of establishes some things I believe in, some observations about the world. One of the things he did was trying to get across to me is that, look, you got talent, you got the ability to do things.
00:19:26
Speaker
You're holding onto stuff too long, so you gotta just get something out there, see how it goes, and then well move on to the next thing. Trying to come up with a great literary work and holding onto it so long because I have to make it just right before I let go of it. I have to recognize that, honestly, yeah that's that's based on fear.
00:19:58
Speaker
What do you think he would say if he was still alive and had this book in his hands and maybe had just read it? What would he say to you? I mean, I suppose you think about your relationship with your own father. I mean, men don't necessarily, we're not always touchy-feely with each other for sure. you know' we're kind of wanted We're kind of tough with each other and hard, but with something like this, I don't know exactly what he would say. I just i can't i can't think of that, but I know he would be satisfied with it and feel good about it. And after having gotten it actually written,
00:20:30
Speaker
I've gotten to a place i I believe in life after it was written that, you know, well, I did that. It's something I've done and I can leave behind now. And in when I die, at least I did that if I don't accomplish anything else. Do you think you would have had any critiques or critical feedback of the book? The one thing about my dad is that he had a pretty he had a pretty critical eye and he was able to tell you precisely where things are wrong and sometimes he would he could tell you that
00:21:08
Speaker
And you might not realize that what he's doing is trying to show you, try to be helpful to show you the way to make things better, as opposed to you're not good enough. I think that at a certain point in my life, I realized that he was pretty much right all the time. And when I say right all the time, I mean like, I can remember being in the boxing gym, some of the older guys, I was around stuff like that. I always kind of had this,
00:21:38
Speaker
I always had this idea where I kind of wanted to be just on the edge of things that were dangerous, but not quite walk into being, and you know, like, I mean, boxing is dangerous enough, right? You're fighting and stuff like that. The juvenile delinquents that were around me and stuff, you know, it's like, I kind of, I kind of wanted to be cool where, you know, oh yeah, the other kids at school might associate me with those guys. They wanted to get in trouble. So, but I didn't want to actually be the one that got into trouble and step over the line and do stuff. And there are times when,
00:22:07
Speaker
yeah I was going to go hang around with this guy or that guy and you know he says, well, what are you going to do? Where are you going to be? How am I going to be able to get a hold of you? And he would do that kind of thing, which kept me from hanging around with people who got into really big kinds of trouble. But it was because I couldn't tell him something like that. And a father has to be in your life like that. He has to be kind of, you know, a nuisance to you sometimes. Because loving someone doesn't mean always doing what he wants you to do or what she wants you to do. Sometimes it means, you know,
00:22:44
Speaker
It means being, seeming kind of mean to someone, you know what I mean? I'm just doing something, but miss sometimes it just means saying no, right?
Balancing Athletics and Art
00:22:52
Speaker
You've mentioned the boxing there. I'm curious, do you find it difficult to be an athlete and an artist, or do they to those two parts of you work together in in harmony? I don't think it's difficult to be both. It can be difficult, though, to, depending on how one wants to live, to,
00:23:14
Speaker
fully indulge oneself into both lifestyles. Being an artist, you know how it is. I mean, you're a writer and you're a poet and but definitely a large percentage live the nightlife. You know, and like things get done in bars and cafes and stuff like that. And, you know the people you know, performances are always kind of late night and everything. But if you're but if you're if you're a boxer, if you want to be a boxer and you want to train,
00:23:39
Speaker
You gotta get, I don't care what anyone says, say, oh, you can do your running at night and stuff like that. And yeah, you can do, you can get your running done a lot at night, but the best way to do it is you get up at five in the morning and you run, you know, you're three miles or six miles or eight miles. Every day you gotta be, you know, minimum two, maybe three hours at in the gym, and you gotta do that at least five days a week, you know, so you and you you have to have the right kind of diet, you have to avoid alcohol. But the other thing though about being a writer is,
00:24:08
Speaker
It's kind of monastic in the sense that you know you have to you have to sit down and write and you can't be doing, I mean, yeah, I look, I've sat in cafes and written, you know, with people around then socialize a little bit and they go back to writing and I've done stuff like that and I used to do it a lot more than I do now and I still can do it now, but the truth is you have to sit and write and you have to do it daily and especially something like writing this book, I have to sit in my apartment and do it without, without noise.
00:24:43
Speaker
I mean, if you're doing that every day, it's still a ritualistic thing. So that's that's ah that's the parallel, and thats that's what I like about it. ah A Spanish professor in in ah New England College told me that, and he was a writer, he told me that Louis Lamour, the Western old western novelist that he was a boxer and that what he would do is he'd travel from town to town he'd check into some cheap motel or something and sitting right and then whenever he felt he yeah he didn't believe in writer's block so whenever he couldn't when felt he had writer's block he couldn't write he'd go to the boxing gym he'd pound on the heavy bag
00:25:32
Speaker
I tell a story about sparring with Will Grigsby before he became world ranked and then a fight that he had on TV where I got to be help out in his corner. At that time in my life, you know in my mid-20s, I would go to the gym I'd work out, I'd spar with him, and then I would leave, and i instead of going home, I'd stop at at one of the coffee houses in ah St. Paul or Minneapolis, and one that I mentioned in there that's actually in Minneapolis, the Hard Times Cafe, was 24 hours. was It was open 24 hours. That's a wonderful name for a cafe, by the way.
00:26:15
Speaker
Oh, isn't it a cool name? Yeah, Hard Times Cafe. And I'd be sparring with this guy. I'd be sparring with this guy who's gonna become champion of the world. it's like It was like, I knew I wasn't gonna fight professionally, but I was still doing it because like I was gonna have that one piece of, okay, this is my piece of boxing history is that, yeah, I was the guy that helped, you know, I was the the one sparring partner that helped him get to the the world title and everything. And um so at least I could say I did that, you know. And then I'd leave and I'd stop at the coffee house and I'd sit there and I'd write.
00:26:46
Speaker
you know I had this these dreams of literary greatness and you know two so that was the other area of life that I was. trying to build up at the time. So I think that we have certain preconceived notions in our minds about how we're supposed to be in certain areas of life or certain professions or certain endeavors. And so I did have a struggle between the academic path and the athletic path. When I was in college, I took almost two years off from competing.
00:27:23
Speaker
And then I went back to it and I honestly believe that there there are a couple of things that happened between senior year of high school and so between ages of 17, 24 that really diminished the possibilities of having success in a professional career. And I think this is kind of a weakness of mine in my personality. I hold on to stuff a lot. why Why do you think that's a part of your personality holding on to stuff like that?
00:27:53
Speaker
You know, I don't know. Maybe I'm stubborn. Maybe I try to control things too much. I mean, like... I think it should be this way, but it turned out that way. Do you know the poet Bob Kaufman? Yeah, can we bite down?
00:28:07
Speaker
Yeah, one of the beats. I think the book is called Solitude's Crowd with Loneliness. I can't remember the the name of the poem, but at the end of the poem he says, and yes, I have re-fought those unfinished encounters. Still, they remain unfinished. Yes, I have at times wished myself something different. And that's that that that quote really resonates with me quite a bit. I think i can really feel that statement as I'm kind of, I guess, I think I'm at the point of my life where I'm starting to to let go of things a lot because you know if you don't let go of things, then you can't raise other things, right? What's helped you to let go of things? As each day goes by, you realize that the time you have is less and less in terms of what you do in your earthly life. You get one life to live and then
00:29:05
Speaker
ah Also, I man know it's just it's just something about
00:29:28
Speaker
just to live my life more more productively. I relate that also to my faith as a Catholic, is that, you know, accepting God's will and living by God's will, really, the only way you can do that is by being in the very moment.
00:29:46
Speaker
You have to be in the present. The writer C.S. Lewis wrote a book called ah The Screwtape Letters. Oh yeah, I read that from what I recall. The Screwtape is the younger. So the older tempter is training the younger tempter how to basically ah get humans to indulge in evil, the evil side of their beings, if I recall.
00:30:11
Speaker
Right, was how to capture the soul and take him to hell. yeah basic exactly yeah right Right, and he says he says never allow him to live in the present. Always have him obsessed with you know ah ah with the future so you know or dwelling in the past because he can't He can't connect to God otherwise, you know? Where are you at with being able to live in the present? What would you say is the biggest impediment right now? Just the yeah the slings and arrows of life. You know, it's okay. I mean, I made it here. I'm talking to you right now. And I'll tell you what, it's better that whatever I'm going to be, that I can be as good as I can possibly be
00:31:02
Speaker
according to God's will and according to the full utilization of whatever He's given me as a gift to be beneficial to the rest of humanity, because that's the way that's a way to glorify God.
00:31:28
Speaker
Boxing is more of a physical thing, so that's something that in some ways could be more valuable than than writing um in terms of you know serving it a wife and a family. My sense from the reading is that it is a lot more than that to you. That there is a spiritual component. There is an artistic component. I know the first poem in the book you you create the metaphor between jazz and boxing. The perfect metaphor to describe boxing is jazz. There's a rhythm to every fight.
00:32:01
Speaker
I learned this from Dennis Presley, who learned it from Rock White. A fighter has a rhythm and the only way to beat him is for you to break it and establish your own. That's where improvisation begins. No one knows where it will lead or where it will end. Jazz is the perfect metaphor to describe boxing. Every fight has its rhythm upon which is added improvisation. I learned and that from Dennis Presley,
00:32:29
Speaker
who learned it from Rock White, who practiced collaboration with Emmett Yanez and Bobby Zamora, the two men who taught me to fight.
00:32:48
Speaker
Do you feel for this book like a a non-Catholic or a more agnostic, leaning person would struggle at all with this book, given that that that there's, to me, to me the the themes of Catholicism, of the rituals, of your faith and belief in God are like that along with your relationship with your dad.
00:33:17
Speaker
are almost equal in terms of the energy and themes that are there. So yeah, i do you think that a non-Catholic or a more agnostic, leaning person would struggle at all with this book? Not everyone's going to be in the same mood for the same party that I'm in, right? And and not everyone everyone wants to take the same ride that I'm going to take in the same car, right? But the thing is,
00:33:46
Speaker
what i What I really try to do with it is to tell the story in a way that, you know, if if if you let your guard down and read it and and just listen to what I'm saying, I believe you can see the effort in there it to be as respectful to to to those who might not have the same world that i worldview that I have or quite agree with exactly what I'm saying. And even though you might not agree with Every observation I make, I think you'll find encouragement in it. I think you'll find respect for who you are in it. You'll find hope. So the three values in the book are love, family, and life.
Romantic and Artistic Life
00:34:28
Speaker
Throughout the book, you, as I mentioned earlier, you you do talk a lot about, in a lot of ways, you're a romantic and that there has been this kind of lifelong quest for love and partnership and family. And you talk about some of the difficulties of that.
00:34:45
Speaker
curious where you're at with that now, and also like if you have an assessment of what, if if there have been specific impediments for you. um And for me, sometimes I wonder, you know, artists, like you were talking about earlier, writer can can be such a solitary act and such like a all consuming relationship. In some ways, like writers are married to whatever you want to call it, the muse or the creative process. And so that's one idea that popped into my head. Maybe that's been potentially an impediment for you that you you know you you have a very strong relationship with faith. You have a very strong relationship with writing. um I wonder if that's been an impediment to finding the you know the partnership and the the family that you're looking for.
00:35:32
Speaker
Well, you know, I mean, I've got one poem in there where I mentioned, you know, the the poem called Irish Americans for Life, right? I had i had i had a girlfriend who um she was, that that was my early 20s. I was really in love with her. She's one one of the first two women that I was really in love with. And um She'd grown up traumatized by war in Ireland and you know she had family that had been imprisoned and she literally didn't ah see me as a possibility because I wasn't from Ireland and I wasn't fighting the British. One thing I say in the book is I say, you know,
00:36:13
Speaker
the the guardian angels were watching off, were were're looking over us, were watching out for us. And I i really ah do believe that ive there have been some some relationships in my life that I i look back on now that um i didn't want I didn't want them to end, I wish it would have worked out differently. And I look back now and say, boy, man, I'm sure I'm glad that didn't happen. But I'm just, I'm open to what to what God gives me. I think that there's, you know, and and when i I find the right woman, you know, the the the whole thing is, I believe the best thing for us to do as men is the way we should approach women is to respect them in such a way as to remember that
00:36:57
Speaker
when it's when it's time to give, when when I as a man, it's time for me to give my body to her, um um um I have to be willing to give her my life. i you know and And I would expect that she's doing the same for me. And um that's what the third poem in in the book, Two Pilgrim's Souls on Amkara, where I could just recite it, I mean, over a century ago, ah an epic poet from the land of our shared heritage,
00:37:25
Speaker
wrote a poem to a woman loving her soul's very pilgrimage. His is a bitter poem or so it seems, tempered with friendship sweetness soothing his broken dreams. It is true a man like me could feel the same for you, become love runaway, taunting your memory in your future aged day.
00:37:49
Speaker
But instead, let it be said, here on the ground and high among the stars, this man loves the very Monstrance you are. And so, Anamkara, Mokushla, Astormukri, remember, if you ever decide to be with me, one Monstrance too. We too will be. Are most of your poems memorized?
00:38:19
Speaker
Probably half the poems in the book I can do from memory. That's pretty cool. That's impressive. The whole thing about, you know, a Monstrance, that's basically, you know, a Monstrance is what is put on the altar and in in in the Catholic Church and it's got the so the the Eucharist, which is considered the body, of blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.
00:38:39
Speaker
And the whole idea is I say, you know, this man loves the very monstrance and he was basically is loving the vessel of God that you were supposed to be. I mean, yeah each of us are children of God. And so, you know, um in in in a marriage, ah you know, you should be your your love is I mean, God is love. So you should be willing if the husband and wife come together in marriage.
00:39:06
Speaker
That love is ah is a mirror of God. And then the family is is also. i mean that That's what we we're becoming into combining together. That's where I get that that that imagery and that metaphor from.
00:39:35
Speaker
a lot of notes in your book because there's a lot of parts that just jumped off the page and i was going to sort of go through some of the parts and get your reflections but i'm just going to choose one and we can end here and maybe we'll have future conversations because this has been a ah very rich conversation so this is towards the end of your book
00:40:20
Speaker
So you can call the book. It's about time.
00:40:25
Speaker
I'm grateful that I could write about my I had the able to tell the story about who he was and about how he helped me. And my prayer for everyone is to be able to embrace family to that degree, and I, my family didn't do it perfectly, and my dad is not a perfect man, right? Yeah, I hope that that's what people can take from this book, is to the best of your capacity, live as kindly and as lovingly as you can, and make sure, first and foremost, to give that love to your family. Do the best you can to remember that we're not perfect, and we never will be, but the best we can do is
00:41:20
Speaker
to just respect each other and give love and value family.
Conclusion and Book Recommendation
00:41:40
Speaker
Mark Connor's been my guest. His book is called It's About Time. You can find it on Amazon. And i I personally highly recommend it. I give it two thumbs up, and I think it's a very important read. Thank you for much. i This is really a great opportunity to talk to you. and you know Life is effing nuts, and it's effing nuts that I could be able to get to to be. It's quite an opportunity. I really appreciate it. Very grateful. Yeah, it's been a great conversation. Thank you, Mark. Thank you.