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Episode 428: Brin-Jonathan Butler Remembers Flacco the Owl
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Brin-Jonathan Butler is a journalist and author of The Grandmaster and The Domino Diaries.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Admiration for Bryn Jonathan Butler
00:00:00
Speaker
I make a point of saying this every time Bryn Jonathan Butler comes on the show. He's my favorite writer out there. I have many favorites, but the way he writes and the way he thinks about things, let's just say I wish I had that fastball.
00:00:17
Speaker
The harder I try to throw, the more wildly off target I get. To belabor the metaphor, I'm more of a knuckle baller. You never know where the ball's gonna go. And thus, Bryn can talk about Flacco the Owl, the beloved avatar of freedom, with an eloquence I greatly admire. Well, yeah, I mean, all these famous photos once he became once he started going into residential apartments,
00:00:45
Speaker
to hide from the birds in Central Park that would harass him. He would go on fire escapes and peek into people's apartments. Who's the captive? who who Who's opting to live in a captive way? what is What is the most popular refrain I hear by New Yorkers in New York is is very often that they couldn't imagine living anywhere else. And I think, is it because they love it so much or they're afraid of being anywhere else?
00:01:18
Speaker
Oh hey, hello CNFers, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the craft of telling true stories. It's the master of the Irish goodbye, Brendan O- Brendan O'Mary, see what I did there. Bryn Jonathan Butler makes his record fifth, maybe even sixth, I don't know, I lost count.
00:01:40
Speaker
uh, appearance of the podcast, it doesn't matter. Back when I recorded this in March of 2024, seriously, this has been in the can for upwards of six months, still fresh. Bryn had an essay on Cuba coming out and it was subsequently killed. So we talk a little bit about that.
00:01:58
Speaker
Not the killing, but the actual essay itself, which kind of just explores his relationship with Cuba.
Flacco the Owl: Symbol of Freedom and Human Struggle
00:02:04
Speaker
Anyway, so but we started the conversation talking about flack of the owl, the Eurasian eagle owl that captivated the country by escaping the the zoo and then living free in Central Park for barely more than a year before dying ah from ah quite literally a case of food poisoning.
00:02:25
Speaker
ah We also talk about Brin's unpublished essay on Cuba, like I said. You should know he wrote a beautiful book about his time living in Cuba called The Domino Diaries, and we also talk about a true, crimey book he's trying to sell. There's a lot of really good things in here, and it's just a good time. For a time, around the early mid-2010s or a little earlier,
00:02:52
Speaker
You know, Bryn was part of this amazing cohort of sports writers. I deeply wanted to be part of, you know, writing these long, narratively driven features for SB Nation Long Form. You know, there was Eva Holland, Greg Hanlon, Joe DiPaolo, Matt Tallis, and we're all about the same age. And they were all working with the great editor, Glenn Stout, great writer.
00:03:15
Speaker
And I had no idea how to break in. I didn't have really never did. And it that just fueled a lot of my early Just my early Frustrations of just not being able like how are they all doing this? How are they? Doing that thing I want to do and I can't and I'm doing this thing over here and it bleh I was so desperate to be among them just wanted in I wanted to be a part of that crew kind of work that would get anthologized for best American sports writing it would have been cool to be anthologized, but I just wanted to be doing the kind of work that typically got anthologized and
00:03:57
Speaker
I hungered to do that work. Like so many younger writers, I had no clue how to get in the door. So I ultimately gave up and not being able to make it as a feature writer ended up taking odd hourly jobs, figuring out I didn't have what it took. I mean, I likely wasn't good enough to hang with that crew anyway, but you start somewhere and then you improve. I wish I hadn't wasted so much time. My God, I wasted my thirties.
00:04:25
Speaker
ah
00:04:28
Speaker
I'll say more about that in the parting shot. get a Getting ahead of myself here. Bryn also is the author of the Grand Master, Magnus Carlsen, and the match that made chess great again. I know he has mixed feelings about the book, which we've talked about on previous podcasts, but I love it.
00:04:46
Speaker
mainly because you get to ride shotgun with a great writer in mind. In any case, show no to this episode more at BrendanMayer.com, hey where you can also see new blog posts, what I like to consider my internet garden. You can also subscribe to the monthly rage against the algorithm newsletter, book recommendations, cool links, good vibes. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can beat it.
00:05:12
Speaker
So we're just not gonna waste any more time. yeah Okay, all right. We'll have a parting shot ah on Metallica huh and wasting my 30s and early 40s if we're being honest, as I crest into my middle 40s.
The Story of Flacco: A Quest for Freedom and Its Consequences
00:05:34
Speaker
Always a good time to have Bryn back on the show. Let's get after it. Here's a here's a riff.
00:05:42
Speaker
from my time in Seattle listening to Metallica. Yes, master of puppets.
00:06:05
Speaker
um
00:06:22
Speaker
I just put out a piece about Flacco the Owl. Are you familiar with the owl? Yes, yes. So when he escaped from from the Central Park Zoo, I started sort of every day after work. I would go out to try to find him, like a scavenger hunt.
00:06:40
Speaker
And I wasn't really familiar with the birding community, so I would sort of find them on Twitter and inquire, you know, is there any updates? Is there any sort of sense of where he might be today? And it was really interesting because it was intending for Bloomberg to do more of a personal reflection with him because I probably found him about 25 times over the course of the 13 months he was free because he lives he lived predominantly in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side.
00:07:12
Speaker
and So he was also on fire escapes and buildings and when he died that morning I had thought I saw him at random flying over buildings on Central Park West. I read the New York Times report because I was curious about the address of where he died and my wife was like,
00:07:33
Speaker
don't go see that like you love him don't go and i I just for me I had to go for like I I don't like imagining something I would rather see it and so I talked my way into the building and they showed me the security footage of him And I even noticed on his phone he had taken some photos of Flacco on the ground, face down. And he just talked for like 30 minutes about how he died. And it was quite contrary to a lot of the news reports about him because they said he collided with the building, which I think is extremely doubtful. I think he he probably was poisoned and fell off his perch.
00:08:09
Speaker
that's what it looked That's what it looked like in the security footage and and nobody in the newspaper reports mentioned that he first hit the security camera. He literally landed on it before he hit the ground.
00:08:22
Speaker
and i don't know it was just interesting I thought this massive parallel between the connection the world had with him and the Shawshank Redemption becoming organically the most beloved film on IMDb and being adopted by the Catholic Church became a really big thing that Andy Dufresne became this Christ-like figure. I'm in Zewatinayo, come join me. It's okay over here. Have hope in order to get through your institution institutionalization and fear of leaving these walls. you know Trust in me and come to Zewatinayo. There was an impact that Flacco had that was like that, this born into captivity from captive parents, no survival skills, had never flown,
00:09:08
Speaker
in his 13 years of life. And he teaches himself how to do everything. And he's a species that can live to be 60 years in captivity, about a third of that in the wild. And he lasted just under 13 months in New York City with all the hazards that we present. I thought there was this kind of referendum over what would your choice be? Would you rather use, I think just shy of his 14th birthday,
00:09:36
Speaker
Would you rather have another 36 years in captivity or would you rather have had 13 months being free and living your life and... doing all the things that you're born to to do, sort of. and i I find that really interesting just as a referendum on people because I've never heard anybody complain about the morality of putting down a pet if they're in pain, but there's still such debate with euthanasia, right? Suddenly, that's a totally different thing even though I don't really understand how it is.
00:10:11
Speaker
other than we're a little precious about our own species. There's something really interesting about that owl but Bloomberg just let me do a quick little thing about the memorial. That was kind of kind of interesting just to see mainly the love that was there but also Twenty percent of the feedback is just can you shut the fuck up? It's an owl What was the The feeling or the thoughts going through your head as you're looking to and go to the scene of the of his death and even look at that footage oh I Think it was just The connection that I had I photographed
00:10:57
Speaker
I tended to photograph not so much Flacco, but people who stumbled upon him and didn't know his story. And I think I got to him twice where I was the first person there in Central Park. And then you'd see a child walk by and notice you looking up at the trees and they're like, is this a crazy person? Oh, what's that?
00:11:21
Speaker
And I would photograph that look of a child with a mother or father saying, that's Flacco. He escaped from the zoo. He didn't know how to fly. He didn't know how to hunt. And he's taught himself how to do it. And I just thought, how many things are out there that are like with all that divides us right now in this country where it was so unifyingly inspiring and hopeful and kind of joyous So there was something really meditative ah about it and I don't know, I've always had this feeling of humanity, nothing brings me down like humanity and nothing picks me up like humanity. And Flacco encompassed that and then just to go to this last place where he was and and again I saw the security footage but
00:12:12
Speaker
He wasn't hooting at for the last three days, which some people suggest is probably he was maybe sick. He could have got poisoned from the rats he was eating or pigeons. He could get lead poisoning. So it's possible. We don't know. They're they're doing a necropsy right now to look at his blood and and see what was there.
00:12:30
Speaker
Okay, so given that it's been several months since I recorded this conversation with Bryn and the drama around Flacco the Owl, the necropsy, of course, had came back about a month after his death. And he was suffering from severe herpes virus as a result of eating lots of pigeons. And he did have high levels of rat poison in his system, no doubt a result of scavenging or hunting New York City rats. So there you have it. May you rest in peace, Flacco. But all of his injuries were consistent with his torso, with internal bleeding from traumatic impact, but not the head. And owls and all birds obviously fly headfirst. So likely if he flew into the building, it would be head injuries and it wasn't. So
00:13:25
Speaker
i found I found the security footage um kind of the feeling of like if you watch JFK and you see that assassination just being slow motioned, it's hard not to look at the story leading up to it through the lens of where it ends and suddenly reconcile those two things in an unnatural way.
00:13:50
Speaker
because it's really hard not to. It's really hard not to look at Kurt Cobain or Anthony Bourdain or Ernest Hemingway and think all of these pieces lead to that suicide or Hunter S. Thompson or you know Virginia Woolf or or um Sylvia Plath with Flacco just going into this kind of this courtyard was kind of bleak on the day because it was an overcast day and it was sort of grimy inside of it. Like it was perfectly nice building on the Upper West Side but just you know when it's a little damp and wet and I was just looking up and wondering how far did this animal fall because in the in the security footage he he falls at what looked like terminal velocity.
00:14:35
Speaker
And the guy told me that he was still alive briefly. And as he approached Flacco, who was face down, Flacco's last gesture alive was to turn away from him. And I was just hard to hear because one of the most amazing things about him was he when you would see him in peeping into people's apartments or on fire escapes or all the rooftops of New York City, you know any water tower, he could be up there as part of the architecture of our skyline. And also in trees, he had preferences for her oak trees and and there's a recreation center where I discovered him one time where there was a bunch of
00:15:20
Speaker
black kids who were having like a picnic and they were like, what the hell are you looking for? Because we're looking for a red tailed hawk. And I'm like, well, I'm looking for flaco. What's a flaco? And I was like, well, it's this owl. And they're like, well, there's some owl over there. And so they had gotten there before me, but they didn't know what they were looking at. It didn't have any significance because they didn't have the narrative.
00:15:44
Speaker
and so just to see where all like the whole world like millions of people got enticed and emotionally invested in this animal to just see that a superintendent um who really loved hearing him at night hooting just saw him face down and just snapped a few photos where there he is and he almost looked like the golden fleece from Greek mythology, because he's got such incredible colors of his yeah feathers. And just face down, there's something about taking a photo of something that's dead that can't protect itself. It sort of seems like a crime scene photo that feels a little invasive and intrusive. And I get we do that probably to protect ourselves. you know Like to document it, we have the camera as kind of armor from just taking it in.
00:16:36
Speaker
um I did it once. like One time I went for a run and and discovered a guy face down and just along Riverside Park. and I was like, did he just slip or what's going on? and As I got closer, I noticed he had It looked like tree sap coming from his mouth, but in a ah bubble that wasn't moving. And I was like, wow, I've just seen my first dead person. This guy's gone. He's not here. And then somebody threw a phone in my ear and said, talk to the paramedics. And I was like, who are you? And who is he? what what are we And the paramedics saying, are you prepared to resuscitate this person? And I said, well, he's dead. So you're not prepared to resuscitate him.
00:17:17
Speaker
Well, I am, but he's clearly, you know so it was this weird whiplash of grappling with something that all of society is set up to prevent you from really dealing with, which is that yeah even the language, right? People pass away. As George Carlin said, like we don't like to say, they're dead. They didn't pass away. They're dead.
00:17:40
Speaker
like It's just deal with it. It happens. and Hospitals are all set up to you know quickly channel away the deceased so you don't see people. We don't like to see this stuff. so I was feeling that with Flacco a little bit. like Did this guy violate him by taking these photos of him when he saw these last moments? right i mean when we're We're all going to be most vulnerable.
00:18:02
Speaker
And
Insights on Cuba: Societal Reflections and Comparisons
00:18:03
Speaker
as he was talking about how much he adored the creature, how happy it made him, that he chose this apartment building, I was just thinking, well, you know what? I took a photo of that guy who died, too, when I went for that run and saw him because I think I needed a bit of a barrier from it. And I just told the guy, the superintendent,
00:18:25
Speaker
Please don't show these photos to anybody. like just I don't want kids to see this. I don't want people to have this as, you know, it would be like showing, you know, they they were gonna show the last photos of Kurt Cobain, right? There was kind of a petition for that and still like that image of him from and a weird angle inside the doorway where you can see his shoes and his hand resting, it's hard to get those out of your head as When you look back in documentaries or books about him and he's alive, you just think it's inevitably inexorably leading here to this body in a doorway.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah, ah an image of like that can totally subsume and cu consume the life that led to that moment. if we're that That impression is so indelible. ah yeah we kind of Also, it girds us against yeah that that subsumption of of the life that we have come to admire.
00:19:29
Speaker
Totally. And I think it's one of the reasons I find Andy Warhol so interesting is Andy Warhol's great gift is is immediacy. you He worked in advertising. He was the top advertising illustrator in New York, if not the country, ah certainly the country. But he brought that immediacy to two him to his creative life as a creative artist outside of advertising.
00:19:54
Speaker
and Inevitably, the other side of immediacy is you're you're dealing with death, and he didn't run from that. He didn't run from that darkness. He went straight at it by taking tabloid front front page photos of suicides, car wrecks.
00:20:12
Speaker
um plastic surgery mishaps and some of those suicides like that woman who I think she jumped off the Empire State Building and just looks nestled in the hood of a car like she's dreaming. It looks like Picasso's dreamer. It's so disturbing because it's so beautiful and you're like the hood of this car has taken the impact has taken her life and how can he just put this forward? Like this is something we should hide from and Warhol just went straight at it. And, you know, it's, it's, I don't know. I mean, even his whole, he probably,
00:20:52
Speaker
came to public consciousness most powerfully, initially with um photos of Jackie Kennedy as a surrogate for our collective mourning for for Jack getting assassinated. I mean, the next day after JFK was murdered, he was doing work on Jackie.
00:21:14
Speaker
artistically to present it. So there was a, I think death is a huge part of of his power. And I think it is for for us too as a society, you know, like we're obsessed with murder, we're obsessed with true crime, but you know, suicide is this thing. We need a ah phone number to call for a suicide hotline if we talk about any anybody prominent who kills themselves.
00:21:39
Speaker
But you don't see that with murder. like You don't see that with true crime so much. like we're We're just now beginning to sort of deal with some of the complexity of our relationship and appetite for that stuff. So there was something with Flacco 2 that was just...
00:21:56
Speaker
I don't know why I'm built this way, but i I find animals, I always did as a kid, animals that are mistreated in films or television or something like that. and I mean in the context of a story, right? um not Not necessarily torturing animals, I don't mean that. but Although I do mean that too, but I mean in the sense of when you would see dections depictions of cruelty against animals, I always found it so much more affecting than than even of people.
00:22:24
Speaker
and i don't I don't know why. I think it's just because they don't understand what's happening on top of the abuse. it's it's I think maybe it's similar to how we feel about protecting children from this thing, too, is they don't understand. and So I don't know. There was something with Flacco dying as a result of stuff that we did. We poisoned those rats. The lead in those pigeons was our contribution as a species to this environment, those buildings we built. Central Park, every tree in there is artificial. We built it. We put it there. It's a curated ah artificial wild habitat.
00:23:10
Speaker
And that's the environment in which he could only last 13 months, which itself was a miracle because of how perilous it is for his species. Like half a billion to a billion birds per year in the US are flying into our buildings that are you know have these reflective windows or we have lights on. So they're seeing the sky and clouds and trees on our on our windows through reflections. and It just made me think that you know you see your reflection in New York a lot more than you see your shadow. That's an interesting feature of this city because it's it's so cavernous. And in an interesting way, New Yorkers really profoundly saw a reflection of themselves in this little owl who weighed four pounds and was two feet tall and had six feet wide wingspan, and yet
00:24:03
Speaker
Native New Yorkers saw him as emblematic of their struggle to make it in New York. Immigrants saw themselves in their struggle to make it in New York and I did too. I've been here 13 years and I didn't come here with connections or know anybody or have any money and you just try to figure out how to survive and this animal doing it and just being so quirky and and beautiful and curious um and refusing to go into a cage even when he was hungry and didn't know how to hunt. He knew where he lived and they put a cage out for him to climb back into where he could have the food brought to him and and he rejected it. He was he wanted to live live his life despite all the perils of being in a hostile environment and that was pretty inspiring in
00:24:53
Speaker
Thinking about all the ways that we imprison ourselves into routines or relationships or our job or um the way we think about things to see something with the courage to break out of that. yeah The effect on people was marvelous to watch. i I never got, I got more and more interested in it and encountered so many interesting weird people who were just kind of like, I just try to find him every day and just film him for 20 minutes because he's so beautiful. He's so sweet. and um I got a kick out of it. It was very strange.
00:25:33
Speaker
Yeah, you're just you know bringing him up in and even to the concept of ah ah yeah of zoos and that degree of imprisonment. It reminds me of a passage that you wrote in your Cuba ah essay.
00:25:48
Speaker
I'll jump in right here. ah At the time that Brent and I were talking, he had had a an essay that was going to be run, I believe, in Harper's about his time in Cuba. And ah even during this conversation, I hadn't realized that it had been and had been killed. it didn't I wasn't aware of this until after we finished talking.
00:26:10
Speaker
um which kind of changes the context of the whole conversation about the piece. ah But Bryn had shared me an early galley of this essay, and that's what I had read ahead of it what we thought was going to be a publication. Turns out they killed the essay. um So anyway, we're we're pulling on some threads of themes in that essay that ah that I'm afraid you can't read, such as my understanding. So ah anyway, just roll with it, okay?
00:26:36
Speaker
Good. About the very thing, and you you know you wrote that the Alice feeling in Cuba can take its time to take hold. And when exactly does a child's happy relationship to zoos or aquariums start to fray and dismantle into something tragic and cruel? At some point, you can't just look in without paying the price of empathizing with the eyes looking out. you know That whole passage, is i i as applied to the to To the Cuba that you were reconciling with but also seems to there's a there's an echo to to Flacco's plight Well, yeah, I mean all these famous photos once he became once he started going into residential apartments To hide from the birds in Central Park that would harass him. He would go on fire escapes and peek into people's apartments Who's the captive?
00:27:25
Speaker
who who Who's opting to live in a captive way? what is What is the most popular refrain I hear by New Yorkers in New York is is very often that they couldn't imagine living anywhere else. And I think, is it because they love it so much or they're afraid of being anywhere else?
00:27:45
Speaker
I think a lot of it is fear that, you know, New York, the world comes to you. But New York is not, since the 1970s, is not really designed to be a city to live in. It's a city designed to be visited. I think 23, 24 million people a year come here. Where Flacco took up his new life in Central Park is the most photographed place in the world. That's not what New York used to be. You know, New York used to create culture and now it consumes culture.
00:28:16
Speaker
and There's a lot of benefits to that. you know like i mean When I lived in Vancouver until I moved here at 30 years old, um I knew a lot of movies would not come that I wanted to see that were more esoteric. I knew you know exhibits would not come to the Vancouver Art Gallery. ah you know it was just we were We were over there, over the hill somewhere kind of thing. In New York, if there's anything going on globally, it's sort of like what Johnny Carson was to the US.
00:28:46
Speaker
during his tenure, if there was something people were talking about, it was going to be on Johnny Carson that week. That's sort of what New York feels like, right? I mean, if you have something in a popular, populous kind of sense that people want to discuss and are intrigued by or offended by, it's going to come here pretty soon.
00:29:05
Speaker
But I don't know how much is being produced by a place where the average one bedroom is like $4,300, because nobody can afford to live here. And how do you how could you possibly create produce creative stuff that is going to compensate you enough to just pay pay the rent?
00:29:25
Speaker
It's it's the the the calculus just is not not there anymore I think that jail idea is interesting in Cuba because you can't define your life in any way by your happiness by materialistic metrics Because everybody kind of has the same. I mean, that's the design. That's the intention and of course there is some inequality but in New York, it's you know Every apartment you're looking at is millions of dollars, and people feel very much trapped by stuff. Cuba, there is an unbelievable amount of generosity, of spirit, and I feel like
00:30:07
Speaker
It illustrates that there's this but there's way more fear having a lot and losing it than having nothing and being afraid of of that place in the world. and I know there's a lot of data um when sort of anthropologists have tested generosity in a corporate setting in terms of charity and that kind of stuff. The the wealthy always give far less than than the people who have so little. That's a very common feature. and And so what is it about the human spirit? i I used to think very often in Cuba, it's the first place I've ever been where where the real estate of just walking around a city, none of it is allocated for advertising, none.
00:30:53
Speaker
like like and You just think about it and you're like, well, how much advertising is there? You notice the difference so quickly that there's nothing telling you that you're inadequate and buying this product will will solve that problem that you didn't even necessarily know is a problem. and you know All of the women walking around have this incredible degree of self-esteem and who they are as an individual because there's nobody working at them to prescribe this extremely narrow parochial view of what is beautiful and everything else is ugly or inadequate. So whatever sizes they are, whatever colors they are, however they do their hair, however they're dressing, they just seem to act as if like nobody has shot them down from being who they want to be that they think is attractive and and welcome.
00:31:45
Speaker
And I just thought, i've I've just never seen this before. And it's, I think that hugely the reason is there's not magazines and TV and advertising and social media bearing them with um how they're not this and the this is totally artificial and there's no way to ever attain that view even if you wanted to. So I don't know. there's There's a lot about Cuba where I saw a kind of freedom, but I was always reminded that the ocean that locks us in here is like a cancer. It's a gateway to get out, but it's also the bars of the cell to stay in. But there's a version of that in New York too, where I think
00:32:28
Speaker
How many people have I met who are petrified of making the wrong decision? And all their parents have done is try to give them more options, and they're buried with this burden of, there's too many choices, and if I make the wrong one, I can't blame anybody. In Cuba, no matter how what's what's wrong with your life that you complain about, you always have a scapegoat to say, it's Cuba, it's it's communism, it's Fidel Castro design, it's it it's his fault.
00:32:56
Speaker
and There's a certain, perversely, there's a certain freedom. It's like if you were in an arranged marriage and there was no way culturally to get out of it, you would try to probably make the best of it rather than our version of that is you can at any time get out of the divorce because there's no social penalty. So what is really holding you in it? Like nothing, just do you do you want to stay in it? And that's a very different feeling to be in it is you can just constantly spend your time wondering, did I make the right choice? Maybe that other person is out there. In Cuba, in so many ways, those choices aren't there.
00:33:42
Speaker
So there's there's not that version of anxiety and stress. The stress is that I'm stuck. The stress here is that there's too many options and what if what if I make the wrong choice because here I'm held accountable if I fuck up. Nobody forced me to marry that guy or forced me to go to that school or or take that job. So I always just find the Cuba thing just makes me think about versions, the the counter version that that we have and just think, what are the pros and cons of both of them a lot? And for a long time, I thought Cuba had so many things that were vital to human beings.
00:34:23
Speaker
that I didn't see present here, senses of community, the the way people relied on one another, this common sense of struggle, even though it's unfortunate struggle that brings people together. But I mean, what's the defining characteristic in the United States with more wealth than any country ever in human history? It's division. It's isolation. It's the moment you get wealth, you isolate yourself. And number one thing kids want to be is famous.
00:34:52
Speaker
What's the first thing that happens when you get famous? It's a process of eliminating connection to people. you know it's It's a process of isolation. and We get so many examples of it being a horror story when these people succeed at the 1 in 10 million sweepstakes of becoming famous.
00:35:10
Speaker
And in Cuba, nobody was really famous. like no i Celebrities wasn't really a thing. And that was interesting that there was no division between, you know, you go to a boxing match or a baseball game or see a movie. Nobody was ever like, that's a special person. That's just ah that's just another Cuban.
00:35:29
Speaker
And I thought, wow, that's that's interesting that we're just all special because we're Cuban, but nobody's particularly singled out as an individual. And here all we hear is that to be an individual is everything. And you know and there's a lot of benefits to that. But in in Cuba, there was a sense of the collective that that in many versions was really inspiring. But the version that I saw in October was I never want to go back. I went to the airport for the first time with no feelings whatsoever of being conflicted about leaving. There was no unfinished business and I would try to help anybody who wanted to leave leave because i there's just no way to defend how terrible it is. And and I would just have a caveat to that that every expert I talked about, talked to about that situation said,
00:36:27
Speaker
85% of the blame is the embargo that the US has there. So it's it's not just their their problems are totally a result of their fault. I think the US has always sort of complained that Cuba doesn't work, communism doesn't work. Well, if I'm throttling you to death and I say, you're not a very good singer while I'm throttling you, it's not necessarily very reflective of your qualities as a singer. It might have more to do with the fact that I'm choking you to death. yeah And that's that's the embargo.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It's like someone's got their thumb and forefinger, like squeezing your voice box and be like, why aren't you singing this beautiful aria? Like, come on, get over it. Yeah, yeah yeah it's. it's um I mean, the whole other than Israel, the United Nations has consistently said it's totally totally illegal what the United States has done, and Trump put them back on the state sponsor of terrorist lists just as he was leaving office. you know we We deal with many nations that are... you know openly openly funding terror and nobody's really provided any evidence about how Cuba is doing that and their economy was cut in half. They're not able to get medicine. It restricted their ability to get to domestically produce the vaccine. It restricts people from trading with them. I mean, ah it just leads to food shortages, medicine shortages.
00:38:00
Speaker
um and what has it ever done to change the regime that's in power there, which ostensibly is what the embargo is meant to do. It just gives them more power because they have a scapegoat to blame all their problems on. So it was um incredibly insidious to to see the effect that it is now post-pandemic, because I had never seen homeless people there before. I see them everywhere here in Manhattan, but I don't see them there.
00:38:29
Speaker
And and they they were there this last trip. And there were sort of stretches of cripples and stuff, you know hundreds of cripples across three or four blocks in the middle of the city. And <unk>ve I've never seen anything like that before. And there was just this sense of almost like cultural anemia everywhere. so So yeah, I brought up that example about the Alice in Wonderland thing and and also the Wizard of Oz because I i always sort of thought um when you visit there for the first time, it's like, are you the Wizard of Oz dropping in on Oz for the first time or are you Dorothy? And you kind of switch roles because
00:39:18
Speaker
You know, you you you are this special person from a place they've never been, right? So you you kind of are their Wizard of Oz where you can project what capitalism represents in terms of all of their fantasies about what it must be like. The moment I get to Miami, I can have a mansion and I can have a swimming pool and do whatever I want and have a huge car and the cell phone and all this kind of thing. And it's like, well,
00:39:46
Speaker
um You know, yeah, you could, but ah how many how many of the people that I know who've left have been thrilled by what the American dream represents right now?
00:40:04
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of disappointment. There's a lot, it's it's winner take all. Like if you can make it, great. But if you don't win, what's the situation you're in where like during the pandemic, one in five kids didn't have enough food in this country. They don't hear as much about that.
00:40:23
Speaker
And that kind of thing didn't really exist in Cuba before. But but now it does. Now it's just, you know, like I mentioned in the piece, somewhere between half a million and maybe um a million and a half Cubans have left in the last year or two. It's like a biblical exodus. And they're all just risking their lives to to do whatever they possibly can to get out.
00:40:49
Speaker
and And I mean, now we have an election that largely is going to be defined through through the prism of immigrants coming here and a lot of hostility towards it. And and my wife regularly volunteers at ah at like a a shelter and soup kitchen and stuff. And she just says they run out of food every every day. Every time they do it now, they're running out because it's It's all all of this millions of people who've just come into the country right now who are desperate. And I see them on the streets now, like whole families selling candy on the street. So so yeah, the US s is the land of extremes with just, I mean, mind boggling wealth and rent and and cost for education, but the the abject
00:41:40
Speaker
Poverty it was something that you never saw in Cuba and now now it's it's not to the extent of New York, but it's it it was so It was quite Bracing and harsh to see it was my wife had never been to Cuba before and it was unbelievably depressing. Yeah Well, what were your expectations upon your return to Cuba versus what you saw? Um Well, I had seen it, I had seen it i think, that well, from my tenure going there since 2000, I went during the Elian Gonzalez thing, which um was a weird situation where Castro really, really revealed an unflattering portrait of the the exile community in Florida in terms of their argument was,
00:42:36
Speaker
you know these This family died to get him here, which some of them did, but he was stolen from his father. It was kidnapping. like ah My dad's a child protection lawyer. It's pretty clear it was kidnapping. like The dad didn't abuse him or anything, but the argument was to leave a child in Cuba is child abuse.
00:42:55
Speaker
And this was an argument that the US judicial system was not going to have a very easy time defending, but you could keep a child away from his father in his native country when the kid was kidnapped and put on a raft.
00:43:08
Speaker
to come to the U.S., so it was a really weird time to go there. There were all all of these huge demonstrations and stuff. um And then all the way to Obama visiting in 2016, where you just had massive investment. Cuban people had unprecedented hope. I think probably it's fair to say more hope than they'd had since Fidel first came in with the revolution, when there was such optimism and support for it.
00:43:36
Speaker
and um obama Obama visited a time where Havana was the most Google search location on Earth for people to go visit. And everybody who was visiting was sort of saying, this is not the impression I had. This is not what the media has told me that it is.
00:43:55
Speaker
So there was such hope. And that's why I included at the end of the piece what this version of it was that I did not expect. I i knew that things were difficult, but I didn't know to what extent they were. But I will say, Brendan, that I don't know how many friends I made from 2000 until this last visit at the end of 2023. But let's say 100.
00:44:22
Speaker
Probably two two of those people are left in Cuba. Two out of 100, the rest have mainly left and some of the older ones have died. but anybody By this point, anybody who could could possibly leave had left.
00:44:40
Speaker
And um that was the atmosphere as it was it was very quiet. It felt way too quiet um as if it was a whole country kind of in mourning or or like a wounded animal hiding. And as I was going to the airport,
00:44:59
Speaker
after this miserable, miserable, sad, just kind of soul-shattering view of you know probably walking eight or nine hours a day all over the city to see different parts of it. Because one of the great gifts that Havana has is only about 1% of the city is where tourists visit.
00:45:19
Speaker
The rest of it is just exactly as Cubans live. There's no infrastructure for tourism in 99% of the city. um and I can't think of another place that's quite heavily visited that's like that. like Aside from the Hemingway Trail or some of the famous hotels, some of the famous bars or cigar factories, most of the vast majority of tourists don't go anywhere else.
00:45:43
Speaker
It's very very isolated where where they visit. And so i I wanted to show my wife all of the other parts of it. And so we would just walk over every neighborhood for for eight to 10 hours a day. And as we were leaving, she just brought up this Harvard experiment, which has been called the HOPE experiment where she was Intimating that Obama's visit essentially was part of what that experiment is with rats, which for those who don't know, I think this experiment was done in the 1950s, is a rat is put on the surface of water and and they waited to see how long it would survive before drowning.
00:46:24
Speaker
And it could be 15 minutes. And they switched the paradigm slightly and shifted it so that just before it would drown, they would save save the rat and then let it recover and then put it on the surface of the water. And essentially, this is introducing the element of hope that the cat that that the rat will be saved. And the rat could go on to live in some cases for, I think, 60 hours.
00:46:53
Speaker
And it it you know it it just is that element of this is what hope can introduce to to our life, to how we view our relationships, you know existing, being in the world, and all of that kind of thing. And so my wife just said, this entire trip has felt like the 61st hour.
00:47:15
Speaker
i.e. this is um when the time has just run out where we just can't stay on the surface of this thing. Because ultimately what the experiment is demonstrating is the rats last for 15 minutes because they don't have any hope. But what's the point in going on? And that was very much what the faces in Cuba look like. is like I've never met more courageous people than them and yet It was just just waiting waiting to die, waiting waiting to hit bottom.
00:47:51
Speaker
waiting when I know I'm in freefall and I'm going to, you know, kind you know kind of felt like emotionally. I don't know if you ever watched the videos of of, this is extremely unpleasant as a comparison, but like 9-11, the people like as David Foster Wallace said, like when you're up there and there's flames behind you or you jump out the window and have that freefall, it was a ah much more drawn-out version of kind of that same scenario on the faces of people, of just, no matter what I do, I'm just stuck. And that's not that's not what it felt like before. um There certainly were some people who who had that feeling about being in Cuba and comparing it to a jail, a prison, um but there was a sense that you could find great
00:48:43
Speaker
enjoyment and joy in places and there were no cultural events during this trip that were really going on. ah Cuba always had free concerts, free sports, free ballet, free opera, like free everything culturally.
00:48:58
Speaker
But they had no money to support that because all of the money that they had was kind of going toward food or or medicine. And all of that was insufficient. So consequently, it felt very, very dry, like just empty and and just hopeless. It's really, really hopeless. And I'd been warned, but I didn't i didn't expect that. And even Even meeting a journalist who often writes for the New York Times about Cuba, and he lives there, he has a family there, he showed up to meet me at the Inglaterra Hotel, which which Graham Greene made famous with our man in Havana, and there were
00:49:40
Speaker
I'd never met aggression from beggars before, and there was just a bunch of kids, Afro-Cuban kids, screaming at me, give me money, give me money. And I gave them some, and then it was give me the packets of condiments on your on your table. give me the Give me the sugar that you didn't use in your coffee. Give me anything. And I'd never seen that before. I'd never seen anything like that before.
00:50:06
Speaker
It's kind of like what you were saying a moment ago about flaco where it's like you you didn't want to imagine you wanted to go to the scene to really see it for yourself and they that's where it's like you had heard this like that it was bad but you needed to see with your own eyes and that just gets to how deeply immersive that you know this piece is and I think all of your work is because you're willing to.
Exploration of Trauma and Its Societal Impact
00:50:28
Speaker
You're willing to go there and not do it virtually like you're gonna get on that plane and you're going to walk the streets and then Really immerse yourself in it, and you know for no matter ah what the psychic cost is for you I think you know it's interesting because like I've been putting out a book proposal about a kind of a true crime book, but it's sort of examining and deconstructing true crime a little bit through the lens of trauma in the sense that the story I'm dealing with is a ah kidnapping that didn't really work.
00:51:00
Speaker
or it didn't work the way it was supposed to. And because it was such a brief from the kidnapping to it, quote unquote, being solved, it was 34 hours or 35 hours. So open and shut case. Well, it was open and shut to the media. It was open and shut according to the police reports. It was open and shut according to the judicial system. Who was it not open and shut for? Everybody involved in it.
00:51:26
Speaker
Every single person involved in it, whether they were the criminals who all got caught and looked like buffoons, or whether it was the mother who was kidnapped in front of her two kids who were four or five years old, who were tied up and left in a bathroom for seven hours. you know The husband of that mother ah worrying terribly, her father um All of their extended families of people involved with this case and so many more ancillary people so what I noticed is I'm I'm really exploring trauma and I think what inspired me about this was Twin Peaks where Twin Peaks is the first time in a long time or or One of the first in a revolutionary kind of way to look at a so-called true crime story ie we find the body it wrapped in plastic on the shore and um
00:52:15
Speaker
who did it and who is the person who's going to so you know track that person down is totally secondary to who was this victim. How do we understand who that victim was? Well, we understand her through the community that is grieving her. And as we learn about them, we learn more about her. And as we learn more about her complexity, we learn more about them. It was an explicit procedural true crime kind of story where Lynch didn't even want to solve who did the crime because it wasn't his point.
00:52:47
Speaker
His point was that we need to continue to investigate. And it made me think about the version of trauma I'm talking about in my story is not necessarily what happened that causes trauma, but how an event can cause you to pollute and contaminate your imagination about what could happen to you. And that is what traumatizes you.
00:53:13
Speaker
And that's the kind of trauma that that I first experienced that changed my life as a little kid. I was attacked and swarmed by a bunch of kids when I was 11, but nothing actually happened to me. I wasn't hospitalized. I wasn't bleeding. I didn't break any bones.
00:53:28
Speaker
But it's suggested that at any moment this could happen again and I could be killed. There was a, at the same time, there was a curbing, like what happened in American History X, like most famous gro grotesque scene in that film is the protagonist forcing somebody to bite a curb and stomping the back of his head. That happened that same time when when I was attacked. And I just thought, at any moment, that could be you.
00:53:55
Speaker
so it's at that time there wasn't the understanding of trauma to include sort of forecasting what could happen they just said what did happen oh it wasn't it wasn't sufficiently violent to hospitalize you or it it's in your head so you just must be too sensitive or paranoid or or whatever so i i think that That is a thing that I'm very interested in when I'm reporting on stories because I just carry it. You bring it with you. I was 11, 33 years later, it's still a big element of how I kind of investigate the impact of harm. It's not just what happened, but how does it change your perspective about what the world is and your security and safety in it?
00:54:48
Speaker
and as ah somebody who taught hundreds of people how to box, lot mainly kids and women, um most of them who are coming to me are not feeling very safe in the world, either as a result of something has scared them in in the media or a movie or a TV show or something like that, or or friends have told them something to be scared of, or they've had something horrible happen to them in a way that they don't think they can escape viewing the world through that lens of the potential for their harm. And so it's about rebuilding a connection to feeling safe in the world, and and which is something that I, it took me three years to really feel safe to to leave my front door. But I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective of trauma, not the trauma of what happens, but the trauma of what could happen, and and the trauma of of imagination and speculation, because it's
00:55:45
Speaker
that That really wasn't the way it was looked at decades ago. There wasn't much of an evolved understanding of that form of PTSD in a sense from an experience that largely would be looked at very dismissively. um Similar to kind of the language we have about um sexual assault and stuff like that, right? I mean, I think that that that evolution of its impact and how insidious it is has changed so much over the decades.
00:56:13
Speaker
But I mean, thinking back to even even what the language, how it applied to to women or children and stuff like that, we were so dismissive of things now that we, I think, very fortunately take much more seriously.
00:56:26
Speaker
Yeah, how are you trying – I love what you're what you're saying and hearing you think through that. it's ah How are you trying to to to package that in ah in a way that um yeah that that might make him make sense to be it an agent or a publisher to see? like you're not You're more focused on that on that and that headspace and the the PTSD component of the ah of of of the victims and not necessarily like that the pulpy crime itself.
00:56:57
Speaker
Well, it's pretty it's pretty easy because all you do, I mean, my my crime took place 34 years ago, is just take all the headlines and take all the interviews I did with journalists that covered the crime at the time. And they all said the same thing. What the hell is there to do to talk about with this? It's done. It took 34 hours. And I said, well, do you ever wonder why every single person involved in this crime has never spoken publicly about it since? You ever asked that question?
00:57:27
Speaker
why they didn't feel safe to do that, why they didn't think anybody would care. And the first thing I did was not just look at the victim of the crime who was kidnapped, this 30-year-old mother of a multi-billionaire, was to look at that there had been three, maybe even four intended targets of of the kidnapping. and One of the newspapers published all of their names and it turned out I had gone to school with one of them who was three years younger than me. and I remember that kid walking around school. I had no idea that his dad was a billionaire. I had no idea that every Friday he would have a limousine pick him up at school and take him to a private airport where a private jet was waiting for him to say, where do you want to go this weekend? and He could go anywhere.
00:58:14
Speaker
But when he was six years old, he was the first target, or I think he was eight years old. And when the newspaper published that from the trial of of the actual kidnapping that happened,
00:58:28
Speaker
His dad, he was at Disneyland, and his dad sent a private security team to Disneyland and forced him onto the floor of a limousine to take him to an airport, to get him back to Vancouver, and he was never able to leave his front door again without the terror that they could come. They now know my name, they know my dad, they know where I live, and at any moment they can come and get me.
00:58:52
Speaker
Well who who who particularly in in society is going to be sympathetic to that child of a billionaire's paranoia? As far as he was concerned, nobody was. so it was interesting and All I had to do was collect headlines and articles and interviews with people that covered this trial to see for them it was a joke. it you know so it was like like I literally am titling it, what is a term that I've only heard applied to true crime, which is relatively unharmed.
00:59:23
Speaker
This woman kidnapped in front of her kids at gunpoint, who thought she was going to die every moment of 14 hours of being abducted, was returned relatively unharmed. Really? 14 hours at gunpoint? Thinking you're going to die every moment when you've forcibly been separated from your two five-year-old kids who, you as far as you know, were murdered. Your husband was murdered. Maybe your dad was murdered. But when you were returned as far as the media is concerned, you're relatively unharmed.
00:59:50
Speaker
and just having that title, that framework, that lens into the people in the story, including the guy who did it, who had never spoken about it in 33 years to think, what motivates you to do something like this to a family?
01:00:09
Speaker
where money not only doesn't protect you, but billions of dollars don't protect you from something like this, they put a target on your back. Because what is the most expedient way for you to transfer the wealth of a billionaire to yourself? It's not robbing the bank, it's kidnapping some somebody associated with that person that has you know no You have no ability to put a price on it. the The second oldest profession in this world after prostitution is kidnapping for ransom. Every civilization utilized it. and and And more broadly speaking, what's the difference between that and slavery? It was all just there. You just had to have the right framework to see it. But once you got relatively unharmed, it turned everything into a very dark comedy about
01:00:59
Speaker
the tone that everybody was looking at this this story. and And I think that's a bit like the the Twin Peaks thing, right? is What is Twin Peaks? is it Is it satirizing a soap opera? Lynch said, no, it is a soap opera.
01:01:15
Speaker
Why is it a soap opera? Because that's what we watch. and And what is it satirizing about true crime? It's satirizing that we're used to a procedural where in the last 10 minutes we figure out who did it. We get closure. Is there real closure for anybody that suffers trauma? I don't know. They can say it. Like we can pathologize it. We can analyze it.
01:01:39
Speaker
but You know, like when when does um the death of a parent or a loved one or a child go from a natural period of depression and mourning and grief to something pathological, to something that we need to clinically diagnose and treat? Is everybody the same in that way?
01:02:00
Speaker
Like we're we're kind of strange about this stuff, right? With modern psychiatry and and how we we deal with this stuff. And that's where I wanted to go. And I remember talking to my dad about this and he said to me at one point, he said, if I understand you right philosophically, you're kind of saying that all crime is a form of therapy. but I went, well, my kidnapper had more trauma in his childhood sexually, physically, emotionally, kicked around foster homes, substance abuse than just about anybody I've ever encountered. And his idea was eight and a half million dollars could transform not just his station in the world or his lifestyle, but could buy him a new identity.
01:02:49
Speaker
Well, who wants to buy a new identity, right? Somebody who whose previous identity is a house on fire. And I'm not defending what he what he tried to do. I'm just trying to understand him rather than judge him.
01:03:02
Speaker
and In the process, of course, what does he do? He imposes the trauma that he had grown up with onto a new family. Everybody in that family was affected by this new form of trauma that no none of them could ever feel safe again. There could always be somebody else like this guy who could target them for no other reason than their exorbitant wealth. um But it seemed like the money was kind of incidental other other than um you know If you think about what has done more harm in our relationship to the world, like i mean as a species, doesn't greed kind of explain all of it? The profit motive against any other metric, being like like superseding any other metric? If you think about like every major issue, how greed plays a role, and yet greed is not a mental illness.
01:03:58
Speaker
But you know it's it's just so powerful. And I became really invested in the idea of no matter how ruthless an entrepreneur is to acquire their billions, we kind of venerate them as a success story. But if you want to target them and go after go after them in some form of kidnapping for ransom, you're an unimaginable monster.
01:04:24
Speaker
And I'm not saying they're they're the same thing, but it's it's it's interesting in the United States, for example. I mean, none of the the super famous families.
01:04:35
Speaker
acquired their great fortunes outside of nefarious means. I mean, like rigging the stock market, bootlegging, horrifically brutal means of of acquisition. Say nothing of the impact of slavery in the country. But I mean, how many of those people want to give their money back? They don't have to. They just can have tax write-offs with giving money to charity and stuff like that or or name universities after themselves and and that way of sort of whitewashing their reputation.
01:05:09
Speaker
so That's kind of where I went with trauma as ah as an underlying motivation for people. I had way more time with actually in this case, normally I think I would want the victims as much as possible in a story, but I had access to the person that inflicted the trauma in this case and then just learned a lot about his own. And then I just got back very recently from interviewing the first intended target who came from all this wealth that I went to high school with.
01:05:37
Speaker
and easily the most tormented person I've ever met in my life. And and yet he would say to me on on numerous occasions, you know No matter how miserable I am, I'm the son of a billionaire. like Who gives a shit? I know nobody would ever care. I know nobody would ever listen to me. I know nobody would ever have sympathy with me. And I i get it. But does it mean that I'm not entitled to struggle? his He was born into a life that a kidnapper was willing to murder a family and destroy a family and traumatize a family in order to buy his way into.
01:06:15
Speaker
And yet he had no understanding of of this other side of of what it meant, because how could you? Again, it becomes a kind of Wizard of Oz, right?
01:06:26
Speaker
you know the the The Wizard of Oz in the book, very notably a difference between it and the the film is that you have to wear green glasses when you get to Oz because Oz is not that green. You need the glasses to maintain the perception that it is. And that that fact alone, I hadn't read the book until quite recently when I was working on that Cuba article. I just thought, how many things are like that for us as people?
01:06:56
Speaker
How many things do we require glasses of the color that we hope the place is? Because might not be the it might not be that color as much as we would like.
01:07:07
Speaker
with a person, with a job, you know with ourselves, with how we how we deal with our lives, et cetera, et cetera. The American dream is is is ah is a certain kind of glass is put over a lot of people's eyes to yeah to feed into the system with the hope that maybe you'll get that lottery ticket.
01:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. and and you know I've been here 13 years, but i'm I'm very much an outsider to it. I grew up with all of American media and culture and music, all creative stuff telling me what it was before I ever saw what it was. and The same is true with Cuba. right so to look at cuba was a way to like I had way more American culture inculcating me than Canadian culture right because i'm watching TV, 98% of the channels are American, 98% of the films are American. I think 75% of the music was American because there's a quota in Canada of Canadian content.
01:08:13
Speaker
But it's very interesting then when you go to the United States, you go to its dream factory in Los Angeles or you come to New York, how it squares with the image that it presents of itself and Canada just not trying to be number one at anything.
01:08:31
Speaker
Some people say there's an insecurity from that, or or there's a bit of a, not not a chip on the shoulder necessarily, but an inferiority complex, which I think is is partly quite true, culturally speaking. But it also makes you wonder about a country that can never shut up about saying how it's the greatest that's ever existed. And everywhere you're looking, you're thinking, why are you so insecure? Why can't you stop saying this?
01:08:56
Speaker
Like when the national anthem comes on, you guys look like, you know, devoted, like it's a religious cult, yeah and we don't have that in Canada in the sense there's no pledge of allegiance in Canadian classrooms. That would be petrifying to most Canadians because we don't have that connection to patriotism, which is why when South Park makes a movie and says, blame Canada, Canadians in the theater I watched it with were howling, but try to make fun of an American's patriotism and see where it gets you. They're ready to fight.
01:09:30
Speaker
Yeah. Because you have a very clear idea of what it is, and our idea of patriotism is, are you American when we're anywhere you know in Europe or or traveling anywhere, Asia? No, we're not. We're Canadian. So all we are is were we we were assumed to be you, but we're not. That's a weird thing to be. that's you know there's a There's a kind of feeling, the way America makes us feel, like you guys are participating in the Olympics and we're in the Special Olympics.
01:09:59
Speaker
You know, like, oh, we're so inspired by what you're doing. It's like, oh, thanks. that That's so kind of you. And I just, in hearing you talk about it, I just, I keep thinking about, you know, flacko the owl, just then looking in through to people's glass, into people, through people's windows.
Symbols of Enlightenment and Authenticity in Life and Death
01:10:19
Speaker
And it's just like, he's the enlightened one. And it's, and it's just ah it this image, I think so much of what you've been saying this whole time kind of ties.
01:10:29
Speaker
It's like the he's the avatar of enlightenment here and I just i just you ah just see i see him being like the mule that carries ah carries so much of what you've been talking about.
01:10:40
Speaker
Well, he has something because I think, you know, it's funny, when I went to the memorial, I didn't write about it. I would have if it was not a Bloomberg piece that I was writing on deadline, but there was already a stand for merchandise. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. There was a stand for merchandise, you know, Flacco t-shirts, Flacco buttons and stuff.
01:11:01
Speaker
Well, this is what I find so interesting. And I'm saying this to my wife when I was there, is I was saying, I fucking hate funerals because it just brings out the most phony bullshit in people in in whatever the focal point is that they're talking about. But I love cemeteries. Like when I see somebody bring a flower to a grave in a cemetery, I always go to a cemetery when I arrive in any new city because it's it's quiet.
01:11:30
Speaker
there's There's birds, there's animals, often there's cats. And it's not performative. yeah And it's not performative. People go there and it's who who they are in the shade. It's who they are in the dark.
01:11:45
Speaker
And those moments I find so moving to to witness. And the moment there's a funeral, like Flacco's funeral poems were read and speeches were read and the photographers, the birders who were all there, hi, I'm this birder and I used to be a hedge fund guy. I retired at 40 so I could devote my life to tracking birds in Central Park and everything. They're such interesting, strange, eccentric people.
01:12:14
Speaker
But it was like, we have our moment to shine where the whole world is invested in this Eurasian eagle owl. And it's like, yo i mean yeah, okay. But it's all about us documenting. It's sort of like interviewers, you know and and you and I both interview a lot of people. It's fascinating to interview people interview people we're interested in.
01:12:35
Speaker
But am I going to give you a whole speech? I was watching something the other day of Jim Lampley from HBO being interviewed. Jim knows fucking everybody, too, in Hollywood and sports and everything. But you're just going to spend an hour recounting the highlights of your interviews? It's it's kind of weird. It's a little bit weird. and There was something about that with the funeral and sort of every funeral I've been to, for the most part, they unfortunately unintentionally become comic.
01:13:07
Speaker
And I don't want that, but the performative nature is if I knew the person who was being talked about, I can't not think of them thinking, I can't believe they're saying this. i like How can you possibly say that now that I'm dead when you know how patently false it is? like I'm thinking also, like I had ah the first the first editor who found me for for the The first two books I did, The Domino Diaries and A Cuban Boxer's Journey, is a young kid and he died at 27 of a, I think there was fentanyl or heroin overdose or something and I hadn't even known he had any issues with that. But he died very suddenly and I was supposed to meet him the day after he died to to meet a fiance he had and stuff and then I got a call from from my publisher just to say,
01:14:00
Speaker
he's He's gone. I said, no, no, I'm supposed to have dinner with him tonight. No, he's gone. he he He died yesterday. It was very shocking because he was 27 and you think you're at the beginning of a relationship with somebody when really you're just about at the end right after meeting them.
01:14:15
Speaker
and The two or three times I'd met him, he had spent half of the time talking about what an asshole his rich father was in Connecticut and all the ways in which his father forced him to be somebody he wasn't. I went to his funeral with a few of his close friends. The fiancé was there and she said, we were supposed to be having dinner tonight, not doing this.
01:14:42
Speaker
yeah that's Yeah, that was the plan. um And then the father gave his eulogy where it was entirely the context of, despite my son, kind of he was kind of intimating how his son died with the drug overdose thing, but didn't want to say it explicitly. It was all that he was going to be in heaven waiting for the rest of the family to join him. And I could just imagine Peter was his name just saying, how is this fucking person that I loathe more than any human being on earth, not just the one talking at this, but talking about me in a context that to my soul, I reject, I want nothing to do with, and he knows it, but he will perform it anyway in ah in a self-serving fashion. So it became really funny
01:15:35
Speaker
Because if you don't laugh at it, you're going to cry at just how you know wrong it is. And so I don't know. This is this is a facet of kind of, but i ah I remember thinking the first time I was an adult and went to a concert I wanted to go to, I think I went to Radiohead. And I just thought, this is like meeting the ex-girlfriend, the ex-boyfriends of a girl you've just started dating. And there's 20,000 of them here.
01:16:04
Speaker
and it's not necessarily as positive as I would have hoped in terms of how I factor in to this group. it's It's a little unsettling. The funeral stuff in particular or just how we seek to eulogize people or commemorate them or think about them, i it is just one of the most interesting things that humans do for me just to to be around it. It's disturbing, but it's like, yeah i remember I remember seeing like that Roadrunner documentary on Bourdain and a number of the people really close to him saying, don't let what happened to him in France with him doing this stupid act take over all of the wonderful things he did. This is not him.
01:16:51
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, it is. Because it's not just a stupid act. It's a big part of his entire appeal, was that he was an intensely charming person who was curious and enthusiastic. I mean, what did he have on his Twitter handle? Enthusiast, one word, enthusiast. But what was Bourdain in reality? Also, depressed, miserable, running,
01:17:20
Speaker
terrified of committing to family, terrified of having a home, terrified of staying in one place. All the people close to him said he was urgently trying to get somewhere and then immediately trying to get away from that place. He was somebody with a lot of demons.
01:17:35
Speaker
And those demons resulted and manifested in him telling us over and over and over again in humor. this makes Eating a hamburger at an airport makes me want to kill myself. This hotel room makes me want to kill myself. This situation makes me want to kill myself. Being on TV all the time makes me want to kill myself. I hate mimes. Mimes make me want to kill myself. But why? Because He's living a life of performance and there's even some like YouTube channels where they have psychiatrists kind of assessing him and they say it's not that different than Robin Williams. It's not that different than a lot of people who are very beloved charismatic depressives where you watch their face as they make you laugh but it makes you not pay attention to how sad their eyes are.
01:18:23
Speaker
And look at Bourdain. Bourdain is an intensely sad person. Intensely sad. And I'm not saying that that should be who he is, but it's part of who he is. There's nothing wrong with admitting sort of the like totality of the person, like holistically grappling with some of their sadness allowed for their death and their appreciation for humor and sarcasm and iconoclasm and nonconformity and rebelliousness and their courage and stuff like it.
01:18:57
Speaker
We only want to give credit to the virtues of somebody's characters and a very narrow idea of what virtues are, but demons propel. so Like, I mean, Prefontaine, you tell me, you've just written a biography on him. How much of what motivated this guy to such excellence, to such a personality that millions of people have invested in is about his demons or his virtues that really propelled him forward into the world.
01:19:22
Speaker
I think it's it's so much more common. yeah you know I think i think there are other like one that stands out in the other direction that that I find very moving is is like Anton Chekov was somebody where his name was synonymous in Russia from towns hundreds or thousands of miles away where they'd say, if you don't have money, if you don't have medicine, if if you need help in some way, you need to go in that direction and ask for this guy Chekov.
01:19:51
Speaker
and he would give you medical treatment, he'd give you food, he'd give you a place to stay. It was just part of his nature. And Nabokov talks about this in in his Russian lectures book, um that Chekhov was just so beloved because after he'd do this, the real price for admission for that kind of generosity is he'd say, now let's go to a pub and drink and I want to hear your stories.
01:20:18
Speaker
And that's why the most comprehensive portrait of Russia of that time comes from him is because he was this one stop shop kind of person just to help anybody in need. And that was the great joy that he had from a family that he adored growing up with. He just turned that into this extended community for people. But I can't think of many people that are like that.
01:20:44
Speaker
like I think most of the people who are propelled to such drive for artistic output, you know Picasso was way more productive in his 80s than he was in his 20s. He was extremely productive in his 20s, but clearly death is the big motivator there.
01:21:04
Speaker
and like most of i mean I forget who said it, but like a broken childhood is a really good prerequisite for most artists. yeah yeah yeah You're off and running. like What's the motivation? Just to create a new a new reality, a new identity than the one that you were assigned you know to essentially do rewrites. um But sometimes that can kind of conflict with How we want to assign value to people is we're a little bit uncomfortable when negative things drive people to greatness. but
01:21:39
Speaker
like I feel like like even like the Michael Jordan thing with The Last Dance was so interesting because you're just like, this guy is awful. This guy is everything you would not want your children to be in terms of like caring, sensitive, compassionate people. But obviously, it created just a majestic athlete you know who is unbelievable, like just a a killer, but also quite a horrible like emotional amputee of a human being in so many ways.
01:22:08
Speaker
Yeah. Like just so so unavailable, so grievance driven. Yeah. So you know just so petty, so petty. there's no If there wasn't a grievance available to motivate him, he'd invent them. Yeah. Sort of thing, just living in anger.
01:22:24
Speaker
And you just go, well, I certainly want to watch him play basketball. Do I want to spend an hour with Michael Jordan? Not really. like i I talked to Wright Thompson about him. we We did a trip in Mexico City. And I asked him about Jordan and spending time with him because of that great profile he did when he was 50. And it was weird because like he adores, obviously, what Jordan represented, especially for people our age. like We were little kids with this magical guy.
01:22:53
Speaker
What a sad figure. you know just it's just something like what I think Truffaut said about Orson Welles. what orson The majesty of Orson Welles' work is he shows you the fragility of giants.
01:23:08
Speaker
They're all kind of homeless kings who are nomadic. you know They're transient, but they're kings. They just don't have a kingdom. And that frailty is so powerful. Well, and in that documentary a series, oh you just see Jordan in this giant cavernous house and his greatest his greatest company is his glass of depreciating bourbon. or And it's it's right there and he just seems so alone in ah in this thing. And it's like, i I don't want to be like Mike. No, no, and most of them, most of them I would, I mean, that I've encountered mainly, mainly boxers, the odd, the odd famous person, but I mean,
01:23:59
Speaker
it's It's fascinating. I think that that orwell that famous Orwell line about the the face grows to become like the mask that they that people wear. you know The degree of actors' faces that we fall in love with to pay $15 to spend two hours with and the lengths that they go to keep that face looking the same. And you go, oof.
01:24:26
Speaker
What's going on here that that this is what they trade in you know that this they don't know who to be without this 25 year old face as they get 30 and 40 and 50 and Same with you know same with writers. You know like I was reading Richard Ben Kramer the other day like that that famous 88 book what it takes and just thinking about how Even after he died, the publisher was going after the advance that he took for the Alex Rodriguez book. like He just ran ran out of gas. He just didn't have anything left at that point to to conquer that particular project. and and i mean I'm not saying he didn't have an absolutely stellar career, but you just think, boy, i mean imagine him grappling with that. you know Just as you were with Prefontaine or or I have with some books,
01:25:20
Speaker
just imagining this giant guy who would think he won the Pulitzer before he was out of his 20s and just scrambling and just going, I don't know what the fuck to do. I just don't know how to do this anymore. And I mean, that was, I think, the last one of the last conversations Hemingway had before he killed himself with A.E. Hotchner was just saying, you can't say to people as a writer, like you're a baseball player, you're gonna hang up the cleats.
01:25:45
Speaker
they they're always asking you the same question no matter how good the book was before is what's next what's next and That can be really terrifying when you don't you just know you don't have anything left It's funny how we aspire or it's tragic how we aspire to to to get to that degree of level invisibility or success and like and and then it when does it become a curse and it's it's a it's a It's a great ah great line from ah Metallica's King Nothing. It's just he – like, be careful what you wish for. you You just might get it. You might regret it. you know I'm kind of butchering the the word order there, but it's just like, be careful for what you wish for. You might regret it. Be careful what you wish for. are You just might get it.
01:26:33
Speaker
And that that that rings true with me. It's like those things that you wanted so desperately when you were young. It's like, oh, boy, if you do get it, you're going to have to reckon with it. ah if This thing that you feel like is gold. Well, I think you're talking about parents being this big motivation for a lot of broken people striving to put their lives back together with achievement or being celebrated or success, that sort of thing, you know seeking control for something that they've lost control of. And Jesus, if you think Hollywood is a substitute for parental approval but you know or ... I had it too. I thought, you know I publish a book. Suddenly my life is is done. like you've You've crossed the finish line and you're just living in the gasp of,
01:27:26
Speaker
relief. It's done. I've made it. like I don't have to do anything else, but you know nothing nothing really changes particularly. It's just what's next. yeah And I'm not saying it's not gratifying to have something behind you that you're proud of. That's really important. But if it defines you, if something if if that's where you invest your your identity,
01:27:53
Speaker
This is a pretty harsh world about what we put out there, you know, for kind of, you know, if you think about anybody who's done anything that makes them beloved in the culture, like I just interviewed Michael Azarod, who was the biographer for Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, and he did ah an updated book on Come As You Are from 1993.
01:28:17
Speaker
I mean, Cobain just sounds like somebody being hunted. It sounds like like his entire life after Nevermind hits and becomes one of the great albums of all time is like he's being dry sniped by the world. That everybody is trying, everybody's learning about him, digging about him.
01:28:34
Speaker
trying to demythologize the myths that he's trying to perpetrate and and the legend he's trying to manicure and develop. And he's married to this extremely powerful, strong woman who's so controversial, but they're drug addicts and they're, what's she doing drugs while they had a baby and they want to take the baby away. And you're like, this is a guy who grew up with nothing.
01:28:57
Speaker
Just the fact that his parents got divorced was something fundamentally, he never got over. It destroyed his trust in humanity. And he he was never really able to put the pieces back together. And the music itself sounds like a crying baby screaming. um you know Not unlike John Lennon was doing decades before with that song, Mother. you know What is the main lyrics in that? Mommy come home. No. Daddy come home. Mommy don't go.
01:29:27
Speaker
over and over and over again and When I listen to Kobe and I think about you know a kid whose dad was ah ah a logger who tallied logs, that was his job, to count logs. That was his dad's job, which by the way, my grandfather did for a period of time too after he had a tree fall on his leg. And what does the music sound like? It sounds like indigenous sounds from that area of trees falling. That's how you get Dave Grohl's drums and the sound of chainsaws bringing down trees, which is the guitar sound.
01:29:59
Speaker
And I never thought about that before until I think Gus Van Zandt pointed it out. But it's it's such a coming from what childhood was and then just offering it to us and millions and millions of people connect to to whatever emotionally he's trying to get to his childhood. I mean, all his artwork is just embryonic. You know, the goo and blood of being born is like he He was very obsessed with a really small slice of what life is about. It just that that kind of shaped him. But um nonetheless, it connected to millions of people. It's fascinating. Yeah.
01:30:40
Speaker
ah Very nice, Brent. I just want to i want to be mindful of your time. I could talk to you for six hours, and ah and maybe one day we will, but ah but off tape. ah So I want to be mindful of of your time. Always so great to be a ah passenger to to your thoughts and your your writing, which to me, you're my you're my favorite writer out there, and i I don't say that to blow smoke up your ass. You just I just love everything you you write. I love being, like I said, a passenger to you either your writing or your thinking. And on conversations like this, always just, ah I'm just grateful I get to talk to you and I certainly get to read your work. So just ah you know thanks for thanks for doing what you do and thanks for and talking a little shop with
01:31:26
Speaker
you my
01:31:36
Speaker
metallica recordings i was like it was like the Yes, awesome! Thanks to Brin for being so patient.
Personal Reflections on Career and Self-Worth
01:31:54
Speaker
I recorded this some six months ago and I'm only now getting around to it which gives you an idea of how bad I am at work. Oh man, talking to these old SB Nation long form guys brings up all the emotions from my ill-begotten 30s where I spent two and a half years working in specialty running, a year working at a Whole Foods, one and a half years at a bookstore,
01:32:19
Speaker
Not as romantic as it sounds. And four months working for a winery as like a seller worker. It's nearly five years of relatively wasted time not doing the thing I was supposed to be doing. Six Weeks in Saratoga came out in 2011. I've yet to publish another book since. you know Come 2025, 14 years after book one, book two might make it to the shelves. We don't know. 14 years. What the fuck have I been doing? I look back at all that time wasted at being the world's worst freelancer.
01:32:56
Speaker
then feeling like a loser for not being able to actually make a go of it, which calls into question your skill and maybe this is how the natural order weeds out the weaklings.
01:33:09
Speaker
After all, if you have skill, then why all this rejection? Why when you took a copywriting job for an agency that vetted out something new to a university and the editor matted you for, you know, having to like edit some of your work. She was disappointed. She had to edit it and tighten up copy. In my defense, she was a fucking asshole. They can't all be joys to work with, but You know, it shook my confidence. My God had been doing this long enough and this person was just like kind of a jerk. Then I land a nice book contract to write a biography and suddenly I'm feeling valued again. Like, oh, maybe I'm not a piece of shit. I recently applied for a job at a weekly newspaper and didn't even get a callback, let alone an interview.
01:34:01
Speaker
You know, like, journalism is the only industry I know that seems to penalize experience. yeah The better you are, the more expendable or unhireable you are. It's insane. Before you know it, you've wasted so much time. Before you know it, statistically, there's more time behind you than ahead of you. I don't know, so what can you do? You gotta somehow seize the moment. i think most importantly is trying not to compare your fucked up path to others. Everyone else's path seems and looks like ah a well paved Audubon to riches and satisfaction. I think I wrote one time I probably spoke about it innumerable times where I just would look over my shoulder and it seemed like
01:34:46
Speaker
Everyone was on an upward escalator and walking up with it and they were just like zooming to the top. And I was on the opposite escalator, the one going down, but also still trying to right to to to walk up. And so every step I would all this work and I was getting nowhere.
01:35:10
Speaker
And meanwhile, your path seems like this labyrinth where every step leads to a greater sense of misdirection and panic. Nobody has ever
Embracing Rejection and the Marathon of Life
01:35:20
Speaker
asked me for advice and good on them for that, but I don't think I could offer anything that would be helpful except leaning into the fundamentals, whatever that is, in my case, just those journalistic fundamentals, accept that rejection is as certain as death and taxes and don't waste your time looking over your shoulder.
01:35:42
Speaker
Look at all those marathoners out there running a race. Some run it in two hours, and two and a half, and they're flying. Some run it in six hours. Everyone who endures the 26.2 miles has the same measure of joint accomplishment on their faces when they finish. Most are not comparing themselves to anyone else on the watch. You cross that finish line, that's all that matters.
01:36:08
Speaker
This work is just as often an exploration or self-discovery or exploring the unknown. Putting your attention on on that, I don't know, seems to appease a great deal of the anxiety.
01:36:26
Speaker
Insecurity of your path, I try to remind myself of that all the time. If that helps, I hope. i hope If not, well, you're far more enlightened than I am. So stay wild, CNFers, and here's a little more Metallica, because if you can't do interview, see ya.
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Speaker
Oh. um
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Speaker
are
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Speaker
oh yeah
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Speaker
um
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Speaker
are
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Speaker
a
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Speaker
I'm crazy
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Speaker
a