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Episode 220: The Unreality of Elisa Gabbert
153 Plays4 years ago
Elisa Gabbert (@egabbert) returns to talk about her new book The Unreality of Memory (FSG, 2020), as well has her poetry and how it ties into her prose.
You'll also hear the five books for her Bookshelf for the Apocalypse and much, much more.
This episode is supported by Scrivener, made by writers, for writers. Enter the promo code NONFICTION at checkout to receive 20% off your purchase.
Keep the conversation going on social media @CNFPod across the big three.
Consider rating the show. I just might read it on air!
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
ACNFers? Look who's back! The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Scrivner. Scrivner was created by writers for writers. It brings all the tools you need to craft your first draft together in one handy app. Scrivner won't tell you how to write. It simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing. And if you enter the coupon code nonfiction at checkout
00:00:25
Speaker
you'll receive a 20% discount on your regular versions of Scrivener for macOS and Windows. That'll buy you some coffee to fuel that writing session, am I right? So whether you plot everything out first or plunge in, write and restructure later, Scrivener works your way. Yeah, that's one of those lines that I feel like that's one of the truest things I've ever written.
Meet Elisa Gabbert and Her Work
00:00:52
Speaker
That's Elisa Gabbard, I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
00:01:04
Speaker
Welcome. How are you this week, fellas? See an effort? Missed you. How's it going? This is the show where I talk to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Elisa returns to talk about her new book, The Unreality of Memory. It's published by FSG.
00:01:22
Speaker
be sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcasts and keep the conversation going on social at cnfpod i'm almost ready to get off the detox but i'm developing my own social media manifesto so i approach it with purpose and not mindless data mined zombie scrolling you heard
00:01:42
Speaker
Check out the show notes to this episode and others and subscribe to the monthly reading list newsletter, recommendations, advice, and what you might've missed from the world of this podcast. First of the month, no spam. Can't beat it. Also, you got a question? You can email the show
00:02:03
Speaker
Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com. Or consider leaving the show a voice message by heading over to brendadomero.com. Hey, that's getting old. And pressing the appropriate button. We got a thing there in the right rail. It's also in the show notes as an embed. I'll answer your question on air. Play it on the air. That sounds pretty cool. I think so.
Influence of Poetry on Prose and Book Themes
00:02:27
Speaker
So Elisa is at Elisa Gabbard on Twitter. It's very active there. And on this episode, we dig into her poetry and how it echoes in her prose. We talk about disasters, of course, and that ties into her essays and a CNF pod deep cut. I'm bringing back the bookshelf for the apocalypse. What's that?
00:02:48
Speaker
It's the five books Elisa would stash in her pack should the world fall into post-apocalyptic mayhem. So you have all that to look forward to. Stay tuned of course to the very end of the show for my parting shots. So without further ado, here is Elisa Gabbard.
00:03:13
Speaker
about suffering, which I thought was just a really great one. And you open that poem, part of suffering is the useless urge to announce that you're suffering. And I just love that opening line. I think that segues nicely to what you've written too. Yeah, nobody ever asked me about my poetry. I don't know. It just doesn't feel like it's as often, I guess. That poem, actually, I wrote
Social Media's Role in Poetry Creation
00:03:39
Speaker
right after finishing
00:03:43
Speaker
I'm pretty sure this is true. The last essay that I wrote in the book. Well, that's not true. Not counting the epilogue, because I wrote the epilogue later on. But yeah, the last essay that I wrote in The Unreality of Memory was
00:03:58
Speaker
sleep no more. So the one about well, it kind of started off being about like insomnia and consciousness and anesthesia and pain. And when I finished it, I ended up thinking, Oh, actually, this this essay is about suffering. That's what it's about.
00:04:15
Speaker
And then I ended up, I had these leftover notes and little scraps and things from my notes for that essay that I hadn't used, that I wanted to use somehow, and I ended up writing that poem about suffering.
00:04:30
Speaker
I find that really, really great because, you know, I found this, you know, in reading, which essay was it? I believe it was in Magnificent Desolation. It might have been something else, but you cited a writer that also used the word suffering in that essay. And I was just like, oh, it's kind of neat that the poems and the essays have these little grace notes. They're almost probably subconsciously, but they're kind of talking to each other. Do you find that's true when you're doing essays in poems that sometimes you notice them bouncing off each other?
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, it's sort of unconscious. It's usually it starts unconscious and then it becomes conscious, like the same phrases and lines and ideas just come to me all the time when I'm writing.
Writing Poetry vs. Essays
00:05:14
Speaker
And sometimes I have to just kind of stop myself like, okay, Elisa, you already, you already wrote that. You already wrote that multiple times.
00:05:23
Speaker
But often I'm like, well, that's just that's one of my few profound thoughts. And I'm going to keep coming back to it over and over and over again. But I do consciously and purposely have bits of language that recur and like multiple different poems or sometimes in a poem and also in an essay or across different books. And I always kind of wonder if people notice that or not, or if it's just like an Easter egg for myself.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I love the essay too that we taste nothing pure, not essay, poem. And that one in particular, it struck me as like a really like kind of cool tweet thread. And as someone who's kind of like very, you know, active on Twitter, I was wondering like, does sometimes Twitter kind of inform the form your poems take sometimes?
00:06:16
Speaker
So the poems I've been writing for the past few years, yeah, they started off as, I don't want to say they started off as tweets, that doesn't sound quite right, but basically,
00:06:31
Speaker
I would like get in the mood to write a poem, but I didn't know where to start. I was kind of trying to like either train myself or trick myself again into writing poems because sometimes, you know, months or even years will go by where I just like, I'm just not kind of in the poetic mindset and I have to figure out how to get into it again. And so one way that I was able to is I would just pick a word or a phrase, like a little string of words.
00:07:01
Speaker
sometimes it would be sort of a meaningful word like death or dying or pain or suffering and other times it would be kind of a meaningless string of words like I almost or it's almost like
00:07:16
Speaker
something like that. Because I noticed that I would sort of find, well, sorry, I'm getting it by myself. So I would use that phrase and then like search through my own tweets trying to find, you know, like good sentences that I had already written, you know, at some point in the past 10 years.
00:07:35
Speaker
I posted on Twitter. And so, yeah, I started off doing that to kind of find like, oh, I've already written these, like, you know, five interesting sentences about death. So I'm going to curate them together in a way that it starts to sound like how I would write a poem. And then I then I can add more lines after that once I'm kind of in the rhythm of it.
00:07:58
Speaker
And then I noticed that if I picked like actually less interesting words, I would sort of get more interesting effects. Like if the repeating phrases were almost just like incidental language,
Crafting an Essay Collection
00:08:15
Speaker
you know what I mean? And so I was writing poems like that for a little while, like kind of
00:08:22
Speaker
doing this tweet curation thing. And sometimes I would kind of pull sentences from other sources of my own writing to, to fill it out. But then I got to a point where that method was failing me, because I would, I would just keep finding the same tweets over and over again. And so for a little while, I was like, Well, this one can appear in two poems, that's fine. And then after a while, I was like, Okay, well, I'm sick of this. I'm like,
00:08:46
Speaker
I'm sick of these phrases and this language, and I'm also sick of searching through Twitter because the search function is kind of a crappy UX. But because I had sort of created this form, I just started composing
00:09:02
Speaker
poems in that manner, but of completely new lines and thoughts, like I would just sort of start with like an in stop sentence, and then, you know, heartbreak, and then another in stop sentence, it's like sort of related, but not quite. So it became trying to recreate the pattern, like the pattern of curation, but I wasn't curating anymore. I'm just trying to
00:09:27
Speaker
sort of diverge in a new direction, but not entirely. Or repeating an unexpected part of the previous line, things like that. Yeah, so if it sounded like tweets, you're right on. There's a reason for that. I think often my tweets do have the kind of same voice as lines of my poems.
00:09:55
Speaker
And you talked about your poetic mindset, and I suspect that you have an essayistic mindset too, or at least hats you wear at a given time. How do you navigate each of those mindsets or travel between the two?
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think they are on a continuum. It's just easier for me to live on the pro side, actually. I think my mind naturally thinks in sentences. And so for example, if I'm reading a book and it's making me think a lot and I feel like I want to write about it, I'll just start thinking in sentences. I'll start describing the book to myself in sentences and I'll feel like I need to make notes about it.
00:10:44
Speaker
And so that's just sort of like my natural way of being. And if I want to write about something in prose and an essay, I can do it. I can just like sit down and produce. But poetry is much harder.
Memory in Literature
00:10:55
Speaker
It's like you have to be in the right mood. And yeah, it's not something I can always just make myself do. And often it's like right now I've gotten into the habit a little bit where, you know, I found a form that like I can make myself write
00:11:15
Speaker
usually a poem a week. I'm on like a good couple of month run where I'm writing a poem a week, sometimes two, sometimes I skip a week, but like it's partly like forming that habit and kind of committing to it and like
00:11:31
Speaker
figuring out ways to make myself think like a poet, like going for a walk makes me think like a poet, more so than it makes me think like an essayist for some reason. So if I'm stuck, like I'll go for a walk. And also like reading, reading poetry helps me write poetry in a way that
00:11:56
Speaker
Like I don't really need to read essays to like get in the mood to remember what it's like to write an essay. So yeah, it is sort of continuum because I think, you know, especially lately, like my poems feel very essayistic. I don't really think that my essays feel that poetic, but I don't know, other people may disagree.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah. I know with your first essay collection, you didn't know at the time that you were writing a collection. You had a lot of essays and you were kind of like a ball of elastics and it kind of added up. Did this latest book feel like you were starting with an essay collection and then you sort of backfilled it?
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, this was different because I got it in my mind that I wanted to try to actually sell a book of essays as opposed to just kind of cobbling it together. So I wrote a book proposal and that forced me to kind of imagine what would the finished collection look like.
00:13:01
Speaker
was the first time I've ever written a book proposal. It was definitely tricky and like a little unnatural for me, but I figured it out. Yeah, lots of fun to write. Yeah, so I had to I had to figure out a way to, you know, make it sound like I mean, I had a few essays that were
00:13:27
Speaker
Some were sort of related, but some were not as obviously related. So I had to figure out a way to make it sound like, well, this will eventually be a cohesive collection. And I did believe it would eventually feel like a cohesive collection, but it was hard for me to see how when it wasn't written yet. So there was definitely some faking it involved in that process. Do you know the writer, Matthew Salis? He has a novel just out of it. We had the same launch date and TV.
00:13:57
Speaker
Oh, he's great. He writes a lot of great like craft essays and critical essays as well. I think he has a book of craft essays coming out next year from Catapult. Um, he's awesome. You should, you should read his work. I'll send you some links, but yeah, please. We went to grad school together. And, um, the first, the first essay in the unreality of memory, magnificent desolation, when that was published, I remember him telling me like, Oh, I would read a book of these.
00:14:26
Speaker
And I guess I just kind of thought about that, like, oh, I wonder if these could be a book somehow. And then, you know, I wrote a couple more that were sort of in the same vein. And that's, you know, that's when it started coming together. But I also, I also was writing like, you know, the, the essays in the second section are pretty different. Like, you could almost see them being two completely different collections, in a way, like,
00:14:54
Speaker
each twice as long. But I
Importance of Essay Arrangement
00:14:58
Speaker
don't know, I guess, you know, as as a poet, as somebody who tends to write really short books, like I get sick of things. So I'm glad I was able to kind of make them work and in one collection. But, um, but yeah, it was different because there were, you know, there were a few things I was writing at the time where it was where it was, you know, it was just very obvious, like that would that wouldn't fit in this book.
00:15:20
Speaker
Um, so I, you know, I had to, had to make choices along those lines. Yeah. I love the, I've grown to really love the last few years, the essay collection at, and I view it as like, uh, like one, like a good album of music where it's all the things are thematically tied. It's great to go from track one to track nine, or you can just listen, you could listen to it on shuffle.
00:15:48
Speaker
It's, they're all bound by some theme, but you can pull one off the wall. I just kind of love the idea of you can experience the whole or just part of it. And that's what I kind of love about yours too. It can kind of just go plug in, plug out or read it cover to cover. Yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to arrange this book. I mean, I guess the thing is, if you're expecting some readers will read it however they want, I guess it doesn't matter how you arrange it.
00:16:18
Speaker
I just, um, yeah, I remember having the conversation with my editor where there was like, there's, there was one sequence that there was an effect where like you sort of learn something twice. Um, and I, like, I sort of don't acknowledge the second time. That is something I've already said. And I'm like, yeah, that's not ideal. But in the first section, you know, I wrote those essays, um,
00:16:46
Speaker
I think closer together in time. And it was just like, kind of, I kept going to the same source material. And then when I put them together, like, I noticed sort of, you know, how much overlap there was. And I was like, Oh, but I kind of like that. And then I but I did have to dial it back because there was a little bit too much in my first draft. But yeah, I, I think the order of a collection is something that really interesting to me. I think about it a lot, like,
00:17:15
Speaker
I really agonized over the first essay in this collection because I felt really sure that magnificent desolation should be the first essay because
00:17:34
Speaker
I feel like it just kind of serves like an introduction for the book that sort of explains how I got obsessed with disasters. Yeah, and it just seemed to make the most sense to me. It felt like the most introductory. But it was also, it was not the first, but it was the second essay that I wrote in terms of just chronological order.
00:17:55
Speaker
I wrote it in late 2016 because I remember I had been like kind of noodling on it. And then I got, I really started working on it in earnest right after the election.
00:18:05
Speaker
And so like now it feels like one of the weakest to me in a way because like I hadn't, I don't know, I just didn't, I didn't really know what I was doing. I hadn't thought of the collection as something that was gonna exist yet. And I hadn't sort of come up with like a process for writing the essays. Like eventually by the end, it was almost like I can do this like clockwork. Like they all have like sort of similar structures.
Raw Writing's Unique Qualities
00:18:34
Speaker
and I sort of followed a similar process. But yeah, with that one, it was just like, I was just sort of totally making it up as I went. And so now it feels so sloppy to me, but there's also something kind of great about it because it's sloppy, you know what I mean? I didn't want to try to rewrite it completely and revise that away because there were some things about it that like,
00:19:02
Speaker
not only would I not do now, like I don't think I could do now because I've like... Like what? Like I think just like almost just changing the subject very rapidly in this in this almost like distracted way which that's an effect I really like and like it's something that I always kind of try to achieve between paragraphs is
00:19:27
Speaker
like a little bit of a leap that like is slightly unexpected like it's not completely veering off but it's a little bit of a leap but I just I think some of the you know the transitions or non-transitions and and this essay are like they just feel so weird to me like I'm like I'm just impressed that I was like that I thought that was okay I don't it's it's hard to even explain it's just it just felt very like
00:19:53
Speaker
you know, so untrained and intuitive. And I was like surprised that people liked it. And then I was like, Oh, yeah, no, I guess I like that too. But then after a while, I was like, Well, I can see, I can see the things I was trying that then I like
00:20:09
Speaker
started repeating too much in other essays. You know what I mean? It both annoys me. I want to edit it, but I can't ever figure out how to edit it without ruining what's good about it. That's why I was like, this feels like a scary essay to put first because people might really hate it.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, imagine that's kind of like musicians who might like as they get more, you know, more skilled or more sort of technically proficient, or they learn something new, they almost want to like, go back to that thing that like, oh, this was so raw and animalistic, but I've got this new technique, and I think I could make it cleaner and tighter. But at the same time, what makes it kind of punk rock ish in in live and improvisational is what makes it so good. So you don't want to edit out and iron out those wrinkles, right?
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah and I really kind of like reading like the first books of authors who like later became sort of much more famous and like you know started winning a lot of prizes and like you know when when you get to that point where people are like oh this is the book to read or like you know that's the book that won all the awards or whatever but actually going back and like reading their first book is often so interesting because
Unreality of Memory and Cultural Impact
00:21:29
Speaker
It has signs of their genius and there's something really brilliant about it, but it's also sloppy and unresolved. What I love is when something feels unfixable. You're like, oh, I can see how this should have been edited or changed or saved to make it feel really good and polished and dumb. But it's more just like the error is just so inherent to the thing that
00:21:59
Speaker
You really can't fix it. I'm thinking of Kazawa Ishiguro's first novel. Have you ever read that? It's called A Pale View of Hills. It's far from his most famous book. It's really weird.
00:22:17
Speaker
I, I blogged about it once years ago. And like, there's so many comments on that blog post, like for years and years and years, it kept getting comments because people would come with like their own interpretation of the book. Like, and it's, it's unresolvable. Like it's endlessly interpretable because it like, it just like basically doesn't make sense. You can't solve the problem. Um, but yeah, I like, I kind of like when things are flawed in that way where it's like an unfixable flaw.
00:22:47
Speaker
I was just thinking about it yesterday. Donna Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, which is very messy and wrong in many ways, but you get so swept up in it. There's parts of that book that I read almost 20 years ago, and I just remember them so well. I remember the way it made me feel to read them.
00:23:12
Speaker
Um, even though the book kind of, you know, ultimately sort of fails in this way, like, I think if I read it now, I would just completely roll my eyes and not finish it. Yeah. Well, you're a different reader and a different writer 20 out of 20 years. And that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:31
Speaker
So in a book about disasters, by and large, that you've written, how does memory or, to borrow the title, the unreality of memory fit in to what you're trying to pull off in this book?
Collective Memory's Role in Crises
00:23:47
Speaker
I mean, I guess it's so sort of belabored and, you know, just like everybody knows that memories are unreliable.
00:23:55
Speaker
And yeah, I really, it drives me a little nuts. It's sort of funny, but you know, every now and then people get the title of my book on, like I'll see it written now and they've written the Unreliability of Memory. I'm like, oh, that's not what it's called. That feels like, like, of course I cursed myself to have people get my book title wrong, given what it is named.
00:24:17
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, so that would be a terrible name for a book, I think. Of course, the unreliability of memory is part of that, but unreality is so much more
00:24:30
Speaker
like memory literally isn't real, you know, like, to me, that's a lot more profound. It's a word I have to roll over on my in my head like 20 times before it kind of like before I get it. It's weird. It's like I have to just keep turning that wheel. I don't know. Well, it's one of those funny words that you could break two ways because it's like unreal dash a T, you know, or like undash reality.
00:24:57
Speaker
And yeah, I think it's, it's one of those words that's like always both. Yeah. It's like undash reality. It's kind of like undoing reality or is like, and then there's the unreal component, which is just in the parlance of the vernacular. It's just like, that's unreal. Are you kidding me? And so yeah, it's just this word that kind of, like I said, it just kind of ping pongs between my ears and it's just like, well, all right, what's going on here? Yeah.
00:25:23
Speaker
Um, now and now, you know, I always thought of it as like a very uncommon word. And now I see it all the time, all the time. Like, I just am constantly seeing it in books that I read, especially older books, I think it was a little bit more. It was in more like common usage in the 20th century. But anyway, so what I was like, you know, kind of most fascinated by like sort of like horror fascinated by was just
00:25:53
Speaker
failures of kind of cultural and collective memory, in terms of like, just, I couldn't believe that we were repeating the past so soon. You know what I mean? Like, you know, like, of course, it's one of like, the lessons of history that, that history repeats itself and that, you know, these great disasters will occur over and over again. But like,
00:26:20
Speaker
It just, it still shocked me that like, oh, like it hadn't even been, you know, a century since the Holocaust. And like, you know, for all the, for all the never again rhetoric, like you could just see like a fascism is encroaching. Like, why can't we stop it? You know, what, like, why don't, why don't people seem,
00:26:46
Speaker
to be as horrified by this as they should be. Why are we not doing everything in our power at every moment to dismantle these migrant camps on the water? I've got that. When you cited the writer who said crises get boring before they get better, I parenthetically put kids in cages. That hasn't gone away. It just got boring. Yeah.
00:27:16
Speaker
I mean, I think it's also just not knowing what to do, just like feeling so helpless that it like just naturally turns into apathy in a way. And then so we look at our phones and just kind of numb out.
00:27:33
Speaker
Right. And I think maybe it's also distance. It's just very abstract if you don't actually live near there and you're not seeing it. And you're definitely not seeing it on the news or in the newspaper anymore. So it's just hard to keep that present in your mind, especially when there's so much other horrible stuff kind of competing for your attention as well. And the way that cultural memories
00:28:03
Speaker
or just history, you know, like I was thinking about the kind of line between like history and memory. Just like, why is it, like, why does it recede so quickly? Why do we, like, how can we disagree on these things? You know, so I guess that was the connection for me with, like, what's happening now, sort of,
00:28:31
Speaker
politically and of course with climate change, just trying to understand why we keep not stopping it. In fact, it just keeps getting worse. And it's like awareness is not the problem. Everybody's aware of it now. Even the most sort of hard right Republicans at this point, it seems to me
00:28:58
Speaker
even they may be denying them public but it seems to me like in their heart of hearts they like they know what's happening and the only way like we're the only ones who can stop it we like we're all responsible all of us who are alive now um like but and and yet like
Creating Interconnected Work
00:29:15
Speaker
It's like we went so quickly from just sort of, well, there's plenty of time, like maybe the next generation will worry about that till it's just like, oh wait, well now it's just too late, it's too late, so we might as well just sort of have our little bacchanalia.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's that to that point, you know, you cite that writer who's, you know, basically, you know, the what we're experiencing now is a result of the carbon emitted into the air 40 years ago. And like, when that hits you in the face, it's just like,
00:29:51
Speaker
Well, what's going to happen 40 years from now when we've been really pumping this shit into the atmosphere? Like, we're so hosed. We're so screwed. I know. I know. Yeah. We'd rather probably invest in rockets to go ruin another planet because it just feels, it's all gone to shit.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's difficult to take in. And then like you also, you know, you cite a writer too that, you know, like, oh, you know, we have to, you know, change our actions. But this we is like, it is like pardoning the real villains here who have known about this bullshit for so long, but are addicted to and make so much money and profit off it, that it's kind of like,
00:30:36
Speaker
You know, they it's like shaming the consumer for the stuff that they've been given us and then we've as a result just totally fuck the planet. Oh, yeah, you know, I just read a story.
00:30:49
Speaker
Last week or earlier this week was going around. It was basically about how like the whole idea of plastic recycling was just a huge scam. Like you actually can't really recycle plastic. Like a very small amount of it. Can you actually recycle? Just like everybody throwing their plastic containers in the recycling all the time is like basically a huge sham because it's like, it's so much more expensive to recycle than it is to just make more plastic. So they don't really do it.
00:31:20
Speaker
Let's see, you know, there's, there's something you said, I don't think it's not in the book, but I think I read this in an interview where, where you where you said something that a piece should have internal resonances, which could occur at the level of the word or the phrase or the idea or even the implication that works semantically, like slant rhymes, parts that call back softly to other parts that make a chime in your mind. And I love
00:31:47
Speaker
I loved what you said there. I was wondering if maybe you could unpack that a little bit and maybe how you try to have internal resonances in your own work.
00:31:54
Speaker
I remember that interview, I think it was somebody asking me for like, you know, what's the best writing advice you've ever gotten? Yeah, that's what it's from. Yeah. Yeah. And that, you know, that's sort of, that's very specific sort of like craft advice. I feel like, you know, usually people are looking for something more philosophical when they ask that question. People dig craft on this show.
00:32:18
Speaker
Um, yeah, so the, and I think I, I heard from my thesis advisor, John Scoyles after he saw that interview. And I think I got the words wrong. Cause I said, I think I said, just consulate and chocolate. Like if you use the word, I can't remember which came first, but the thing that he said was like, oh, if you use the word consulate in a poem, then later in the poem, you should also use the word chocolate. Um, and I can't remember what the,
00:32:46
Speaker
maybe desolate was the word that he had said, but I actually like, does consulate matter? But yeah, so the idea was like, you know, not that this should be like, and rhymed, like an ABAB fashion necessarily, just that it's somewhere that is somewhere in the poem, like reminding you, you heard that other word, like, like a, like a distant memory of a rhyme.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I love that kind of effect in poetry. So, you know, it's you can kind of create it in that same sonic way and a piece of prose, like from one sentence to the next. And I like when that happens and you can kind of seem like almost accidental, but you know, it's on purpose. But but I also yeah, I try to do that kind of like across the longer scale of an essay with
00:33:41
Speaker
like with images sometimes, like images that sort of echo each other or just, you know, sometimes just very explicitly like, oh, you know, that reminds me again of that thing I was talking about earlier. And so the one example I can think of on reality is in that long essay about like witches and hysteria and mass hysteria.
00:34:06
Speaker
There's a part where I think it's the very first section is about sort of like, quote unquote, classical hysteria, like this French disease that people believed for a while really existed where a woman would like, you know, contort and do all this mad stuff and they would have to be locked up in a hospital. And one of the, like, quote unquote, symptoms was called la belle indifference, like just the beautiful flatness.
00:34:34
Speaker
Which was that like they were very indifferent to their own disease, I guess. And so then, you know, later I'm kind of traveling through history where I'm talking about, which is in the middle ages, but also like all these different kind of psychosomatic conditions that have existed.
00:34:53
Speaker
in different cultures. And there was, I believe it's in reference to these girls who seem to be catching like a Tourette's-like syndrome from each other. And they often had that same kind of indifference speaking about themselves. And so I just use that phrase again. And I feel like it comes far enough along in the essay that she sort of forgotten it the first time.
00:35:24
Speaker
I hope it's not like sort of beating over the head with it when it's repeated, but just that kind of like, just reminder. Yeah, I'd forgotten that I said chime, but like it's like a little ding, like a little ding of recognition that you're sort of sounding.
00:35:40
Speaker
Oh, for sure. That's kind of like exactly. And it's like this little gray snow. You're like, where did they hear that before? And it just feels like, you know, cohesive in a way that doesn't feel like, you know, overworked or, you know, like gluten and bread or something. It's like, yeah, it feels natural. Yeah. Yeah, I think the way John Skoyles, the poet who told me about that, described it in a poem was sort of like,
00:36:05
Speaker
that the poem is a spider web. And if you touch one part, you know, like the whole the whole web quivers. And so it's like, there's just sort of all these, right, like subtle little connections threaded through, ideally.
00:36:21
Speaker
I love in one part, I believe it's in the opening essay where you write, I have a strange instinctual desire for things to get even worse.
Human Fascination with Disasters
00:36:30
Speaker
I think a terrible outcome and then wish for it. And what outcomes or what disasters have happened or have not happened that could happen that maybe you wish for in some sort of perverse way so you can watch it from a distance maybe.
00:36:51
Speaker
god i don't i kind of feel this way about the big one uh the earthquake and oh really in the subduction zone because i'm right on there that's so scary yeah like i don't want it to happen but at the same time i'm like like weirdly fascinated by it too oh god yeah i think my thing is sort of um
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of those lines that I feel like that's one of the truest things I've ever written, which it's about me. So it shouldn't be that hard to write true things about me. But it was just a very crisp realization that I was like, oh, yeah, I do this. I think it's more about personal things.
00:37:41
Speaker
like, rather than live in uncertainty, you know, I kind of just like want my life to be ruined. Because like, like uncertainty, like living between sort of hope and grief is so unbearable sometimes. But you know, but I do think like, you know, it's like the Sontag epigraph at the beginning that that people have this weird kind of
00:38:05
Speaker
appetite and desire for disaster and apocalypse. And I think that's sort of happening at this cultural level.
00:38:16
Speaker
the uncertainty is unbearable, you know, like, right now, like not knowing when the, when that's these conditions of living with this pandemic will end. And just, you know, kind of wishing like, we just get struck by a comet, like put us out of our misery, you know. But yeah, it's like, I mean, I totally recognize it as perverse. Like, I also, I can't remember if I've said this,
00:38:42
Speaker
If I say this anywhere in the book, I know I've written it somewhere, maybe it's in a poem or something, but sometimes when I hear bad news, I like involuntarily smile, which is super fucked up. And I have to like hide my face because I'm like, why am I doing this? Yeah, it's really weird. Yeah. Why do you think that is?
00:39:04
Speaker
It's some kind of reaction of like, well, I think it's kind of related to, you know how like when something's just makes you really happy or delighted you cry. And so it's like, we associate, or I associate crying mostly with like being sad, but sometimes just like this bubbling up of any strong emotion will make you cry, you know, joy or even just kind of surprise. So I think it's like,
00:39:33
Speaker
a really intense discomfort that just like somehow my wires get crossed and and it makes me smile. But like I like I know it's wrong like it feels absolutely wrong and bad but it's almost like you can't um I don't know it's not very natural to like grimace
00:39:57
Speaker
which is like what you think would be the expression that you would make. It's almost like just turning the corners of your mouth up is a little bit more natural, like a default reaction to anything. So yeah, I think it's just my brain misfiring.
Books for a Post-Apocalyptic World
00:40:17
Speaker
All right, so I primed the pump for you the other the other day about the bookshelf for the apocalypse and I think it's very fitting and germane given a you know disaster essays if you will that that we are on the brink of of something bad But if you have a pack you might be able to throw in three to five books So I wonder what those books would be for you Elisa
00:40:39
Speaker
So I, I interpreted this, um, I hope this is how you meant it. Like these are the books for me to read while I'm in my bomb shelter or whatever. And like, it's not like I'm saving these five books for the future of civilization. Exactly. It's just for your own entertainment. These books have meant so much to you that they are worth taking up space in your post-apocalyptic backpack.
00:41:03
Speaker
Okay, good. Yeah, because I don't want that responsibility of like, you know, the cannon for like the 20 people who survive. Yeah, like Noah's Ark or something. Yeah, or like, at the end of Fahrenheit 451, like all the men are sitting around the fire, like reciting the passages of the books they remember. So my inclination is actually to
00:41:31
Speaker
like mostly go with books that I either haven't read yet or that I haven't fully read that I haven't completely read. So number one pick absolutely Moby Dick because I'm like waiting for some kind of life circumstance to give me like the immersive Moby Dick experience that I want to have. And then I don't feel like I can have it with like the setup of my life now. So I'm gonna bring Moby Dick.
00:42:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that gives me an idea for, because I have kind of a wildcard book at the end. I hadn't quite decided yet. Okay, so yeah, and this might be cheating, but I also really want to bring some like collectives because like, yeah, but is that cheating? I don't think so. So I would bring, I mean, there's those great Library of America volumes.
00:42:27
Speaker
And, you know, I really want to bring some Ashbury and some Sontag. Unfortunately, both of their work is split across at least two volumes. But I think for the reasons I touched on earlier, I would go with the first Ashbury collected and the first Sontag essays collected, the first two volumes of each of those, because I like early work, you know, it's like,
00:42:54
Speaker
Uh, I like, I like that it's a little messier. Um, so I've got those and I haven't read either of those in full, so I'd be leaving lots of treats for myself. I'm surprised that you're going with some things that you might not end up liking in the end. No, but I know I will. I know I will. I'm like, I mean, I know I love, like you can just open to any page of Ashbury and it's good and you can open to any page of Sontag and it's good. You know what I mean? Yeah.
00:43:24
Speaker
So, and there's like, there's no way I wouldn't like Moby Dick because every time I've ever read part of Moby Dick, I've loved it. I just haven't read the whole thing. Cool. Cool. All right. Got a couple more. Yeah. So then, um, I really want something that's almost like a reference text. So I think I would take the collected journals of Sylvia Plath, not her poems, but her journals, just because that would be like so intimate.
00:43:53
Speaker
And there's just a lot in them and there's this great index and, you know, I feel like it feels sort of infinite in a way, like just anything that you can think of, you can like look up in the index and she wrote something about everything, you know? Like she wrote something about Marilyn Monroe one time. And so I think I would really enjoy that and it would feel like I was never getting to the end of it.
00:44:21
Speaker
So that's four, right? Have one more? That's four. Give me one more. Yeah. So when I said Moby Dick, I was thinking maybe I should bring some Proust, but that's really more than one book. Um, so no, I think for my fifth book, I'm going to just bring actually like a comfort novel that I know I love. And, uh, uh, it's like, it would change on any given day, but today I'm going to say Howard's End.
00:44:51
Speaker
Very nice. Well, Lisa Gabbard, in my opinion, you're a certifiable badass. So thank you for coming on the podcast and talking shop.
Celebrating Writing Achievements
00:45:00
Speaker
This is a blast as always and continued success and continued success with the book. And thank you for the book. Yeah. Thank you so much for reading it and for having me again.
00:45:23
Speaker
Thank you, thank you, thank you Cherish Friend for listening to the show, for being a part of this community, and thanks of course to Elisa for coming back on the show, thanks to Scribner also, but of course Elisa, it's always nice when they return, when they come back. I'm not sure she had a good time, it's hard for me to tell. I think she might think I'm a moron, I don't know, it's my own hang up, but whatever. She's wicked snot, me, whatever, not so much.
00:45:51
Speaker
I thought that was bananas that her bookshelf for the apocalypse included a title she had never read in fall. Didn't see that coming. All those are in the show notes to check out.
00:46:04
Speaker
All I know is that I loved hearing her work through her process and the internal resonances of her poetry and her prose. I mean, that sounds sorta academic. And you know me, bruh. I'm like the street urchin of CNF. Just a gutter punk CNF-er. That's me, baby. Yeah, I finished the retype.
00:46:27
Speaker
Is that burying the lead? A little bit. I did it in an Adderall induced bout of manic writing. I did over 30,000 words over the weekend and I got it done. Holy shit man. Oh yeah. I'm taking Adderall too. 40 years old and taking meds that give to like hyper 7 year olds.
00:46:48
Speaker
Anyway, seems to be helping. I don't know. Maybe not. My mood seems to be better at the very least. I'm not super jittery. I don't even know. My mind is still a bit fractured, but here we are. Now it's onto the copy editing stage, of course. Then I'll send it to a paid copy editor. So I'm gonna do my copy edit, then to a paid copy editor, and then off to the big editor. The big editor.
00:47:17
Speaker
Oh, I really hope I'm in the red zone, man. I gotta be. My nightmare is that I might have to punt. 70% of me thinks it's good. 29% is terrified that it's unsalvageable. 1% of me is dead. I'm only 99% whole.
00:47:37
Speaker
I gave up the sauce for a bit as some of you might know. So there's no celebrating with booze per se, but I found a delicious non-alcoholic IPA by Athletic Brewing. I cracked one of those open a few weeks ago. It's helping me stay sort of on the wagon while celebrating the accomplishment. And you should celebrate your own accomplishments too. That's kind of the point why I'm bringing this up. If you finish something, submit something, take the time to give yourself some credit. I mean it.
00:48:05
Speaker
This shit will beat you down. But it's okay. I'm here to tell you it's okay. That's not tongue in cheek. I'm here for you. Okay. Celebrate when you finish something. People don't finish things anymore because it's hard. You get to that messy middle that boring ass part. And it's just like it where it feels like garbage you feel like garbage your self worth is tied to this thing.
00:48:32
Speaker
And the ones that finish, those are the pros and you're a pro. I know you are. So celebrate, even if it gets rejected, celebrate that you put it out there. Take a moment and appreciate it. A little audio mag update. I got three of them recorded. It's so cool to see how they came in printed, sent them back. We went through a bunch of edits and seeing how they manifested themselves in audio.
00:48:56
Speaker
I have to track them with a little bit of music, but it's really neat to see how they've transformed and it's going to be real exciting. It's going to be pretty damn cool. So I've got three recorded, one about to record, and one writer dragging his goddamn ass.
00:49:11
Speaker
So I hope to perhaps maybe publish this in October. Maybe. We'll see. It's quite the journey, man. What else? Is that it? Oh wait, one more thing. If you're playing golf, you might want to hire a caddy, right? Not just to carry your clubs, but to give you a little guidance. Read the curves of the green you might be missing, am I right? Same for your writing.
00:49:34
Speaker
If you're ready to level up, I'd be honored to serve you in your work. Video calls, transcripts of the call so you can refer to it as notes. It's pretty rad. Detailed critiques, email correspondence, and that person carrying your bag for you so you can focus on the work. Email me and we'll get started. Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com or brendan at brendanomerra.com. Hey, that sound good? Okay.
00:50:00
Speaker
Well, if there's anything I know in this crazy world as the smoke lifts, if you can do interviews, see ya!