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Episode 69—Matthew Mercier: From Edgar Allan Poe’s Basement to The Moth Stage
139 Plays7 years ago
“You have to live a life in order to tell stories," says Matthew Mercier on this week's episode of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Hello, CNFers, I’m Brendan O’Meara and this is The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in the worlds of narrative journalism, memoir, essay, radio, and documentary film to tease out tactics and routines to inspire you and your work. I love it, baby, today we’ve got Matthew Mercier for Episode 69, who wrote a great essay in Creative Nonfiction about HIP, high-intensity practice, and we dig into that. We also talk a great deal about the power of spoken word performances as he has performed stories for The Moth. There’s a lot of great stuff we unpack, so I hope you’ll hang out with us. The reviews and ratings keep coming in and I just want to extend a heart-felt thank you. Please keep them coming. I’ve been leaving more and more on podcasts I love, even ones that quote-unquote don’t need the reviews because you can’t ask for them if you’re not willing to dole them out. What kind of monster do you think I am? Please share this episode with a friend, leave a review if you have 60 seconds, and head on over to brendanomeara.com for a toe-tappin’ good time. There’s a monthly newsletter there worth your time, I promise. Promotional support for The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is provided by Hippocampus Magazine. Now in its fifth year, Hippocampus publishes creative nonfiction essays and just completed its third annual conference, Hippocamp in lovely Lancaster, PA. Be sure to check out the website, hippocampusmagazine.com, for submission guidelines, but also to read the wonderful work being done. Hippocampus Magazine, memorable creative nonfiction. Feel good? Let’s do the show!
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Transcript
Introduction and Promotions
00:00:00
Speaker
Promotional support for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is provided by Hippocampus Magazine. Now in its fifth year, Hippocampus publishes creative nonfiction essays and just completed its third annual conference, Hippocamp, in lovely Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Be sure to check out the website, hippocampusmagazine.com, for submission guidelines, but also to read the wonderful work being done there. Hippocampus Magazine, memorable creative nonfiction.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast Overview
00:00:30
Speaker
Feel good? Let's do the show. Hey, hey, CNFers. I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the world's best artist about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in the world of narrative journalism, memoir, essay, radio, and documentary film to tease out tactics and routines to inspire you in the work you're doing.
Matthew Mercier on Spoken Word and Routines
00:00:58
Speaker
I love it baby. Today we've got Matthew Mercier for episode 69 who wrote a great essay in Creative Nonfiction about hip, HIP, high intensity practice and we dig into that a lot. We also talk a great deal about the power of spoken word performances as he has performed stories for the moth.
00:01:19
Speaker
There's a lot of great stuff that we unpack, so I hope you'll hang with us. Hey, and the reviews and ratings, they keep coming in, and I just want to extend a heartfelt thank you. Please keep them coming. I've been leaving more and more on the podcast I love, even ones that quote unquote don't need the reviews, because you can't ask for them if you're not willing to dole them out too.
00:01:42
Speaker
What kind of monster do you think I am? In any case, please share this episode with a friend, leave a review. If you've got 60 seconds, that's really all it takes. And head over to BrendanOmera.com for a toe-tapping good time. There's a monthly newsletter there that doles out my monthly book recommendations and what you might have missed in the podcast. No spam, I promise. Damn. You're like, shut the cuss up, Brendan, and bring on the guest already.
00:02:11
Speaker
Well here you go. Here's Matthew. Given that it's fairly fairly early in the morning I wonder how you start your start your mornings and I love morning routines and I wonder how you know how you started today and how you start most days.
00:02:31
Speaker
I usually feed my cats first. They're pretty demanding. Honestly, they're exacting. They jump on the bed and they're up early too. So they're like my alarm clock. So I get up, feed them, go through the routine of housekeeping if there's little things to do. But as soon as I can, I either get out to an office, a shared office that I have with my wife
00:02:59
Speaker
Or if she's going out for the day, I'll just plug up the windows, put my earphones in, lock out the internet and get to work at home. So that's as soon as I can get to my work. But housekeeping comes first.
City Living Challenges and Career Balancing
00:03:13
Speaker
You know, all the little routines, those kind of ground me.
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, they can be like it's like an easy it's like an easy win in the morning to kind of build a little momentum right like making your bed or something something as silly as that it just kind of helps snowball some good momentum that I'm sure you can parlay into your work at that point it is and sometimes
00:03:36
Speaker
And although some mornings there is the New York phenomena of having to do opposite side of the street parking, which I'm not sure. Are you familiar with this? Have you know about this? Yeah. I lived in Washington DC before and we've had to do very similar things. Yeah. Very annoying. But it's, you know, it's the luxury of having a car. Parking it is just expensive. So some mornings, but that's when I get to read. I get to read and I get to meet my neighbor, see my neighbors, which is how New Yorkers on the block
00:04:06
Speaker
You know we commiserate so during opposite side of the street parking so yeah every morning is a little different in the future however i my wife and i are. Your high telling it out of the city so hopefully. We're going to be living upstate in the future so hopefully my routine will be a little less.
00:04:24
Speaker
city-driven and more bucolic. We're going to be living in the country, thank goodness. Yeah, you thinking Hudson County or somewhere farther north of that? Columbia County, which is like two hours north of the city. It's not too far, but my wife's work is rooted in the city. We didn't want to go too far, but it's perfect. We found a really nice community.
00:04:52
Speaker
And yeah, I've been in the city for a while and it's time to leave for work purposes and everything.
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, so what does the nature of your work look like? Is it more education teacher-based, or is it more grounded in the writing? Well, for a long time, I was teaching at Hunter College, where I went to school. I got an MFA at Hunter. So they hired me afterwards to teach there. And that was my routine. I was working as a teacher part-time.
00:05:29
Speaker
But writing has always been, I've always been selfish about my writing, as I'm sure you know you have to be. You have to just put it up front and center. So I've always made time for the writing as much as the teaching, and the teaching was always a part of it. And I had a great time at Hunter College, and then when I switched over to Avenues, that was a bit more demanding just because it was a new format, it was a new schedule,
00:05:59
Speaker
In the back of my mind, I always say, where can I fit in the writing time? That's always the first question. And then I work everything around that.
Writing Time and Industry Pace
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's always a matter of, the time is there, it's just a matter if you can prioritize it. Right, and then that's always the challenge, but if it's really important, you do find the time, you shoehorn that riding time, even if it's like Andre Dubuis saying, the 17 minutes I was able to get in my truck and drive to the side of this graveyard, and I had 17 minutes and that was my riding time,
00:06:35
Speaker
You know little kids carpentry business and that's how he wrote the house of sand and fog and 17 minute chunks essentially. I saw the I saw the blurb on your podcast for your interview with him and I thought that's how he did it. That's amazing. Yeah, he's written religiously pretty much every day six to seven days a week for 30 years and a long hand in notebooks with a pencil and.
00:06:59
Speaker
In the early days, he just did it because he had, you know, it was that itch. He had to do it. And he would take it in whatever form it could. And in that instance, he was just riding it in the driver's side, driver's side seat, you know, right on the steering wheel, basically. And, you know, little by little, it added up to what ended up being his breakout novel. The House of Sand and Fog, was that the one he was riding? Was that?
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing, that's incredible to hear, but that's how you do it. It's a little bit every day with faith and hope, and you just move forward. I was listening to an interview with Jess Walter, a great novelist from Spokane, Washington. He said, you can't get into this business unless you're ready to accept that it's a glacial pace.
00:07:47
Speaker
unless you just accept it as a glacial pace.
Handling Jealousy and Storytelling at The Moth
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah. And that's the real trouble. I like asking people how they cultivate their own sense of patience with it. Because a lot of times you can look, if you take off blinders and look at other people's train tracks, and you start seeing people that might be your peers, and they appear to be ahead of you, or geez, God forbid someone's five or 10 years younger than you, and they're ahead of you career-wise, and you just start pulling your hair out.
00:08:16
Speaker
and you make those comparisons. It can be hard to be patient and not have those ugly feelings of jealousy creep in sometimes. How have you dealt with that in your career as a writer and teacher, trying to run your own race, but naturally your eyes will tend to drift a bit. Drift, yeah. It's funny, students were asking me this last semester, they were wondering,
00:08:45
Speaker
And I said, well, first, first rule is that you stay off the internet as much as possible. And I wasn't kidding. Stay off the internet, you know, social media, use it sparingly. Because jealousies are very, you know what, I let jealousy in a little bit, I acknowledge the feeling, and then I just let it go. I used to have a punching bag. I used that, that I would use.
00:09:12
Speaker
You know, but I really try, I try to acknowledge jealousy, but I also, I really, I stay off the internet. I do other things. If I feel jealousy creeping in, I'll just remind myself also that there are things in my life that people are jealous of. You know, it's, they look at me and they look at a few things. I've been very surprised because you don't often think that you're, you would be an object for jealousy.
00:09:37
Speaker
people get jealous about everything, especially in New York City. So I don't know if it's different out there, but I suspect not. But staying off the internet and not following people that you're jealous of, it just, yeah, and really it's a corrosive feeling. You just remind yourself that success for one person is success for all of us, especially in the age where print media
00:10:07
Speaker
Subservient to television or other mediums the fact that anyone's publishing a book and that any book is successful Should be cause for celebration. So that you try and just get really send and
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, and pick up the newspaper and just give yourself a reality check. Yeah, and I suspect that some people, if they looked at your highlight reel and saw that you had two appearances on the moth,
00:10:38
Speaker
And that's like, wow, that's a huge, huge thing, which I think is, which was really, really great, especially the fact that you were able to parlay such a cool story on the moth. And I will definitely link that up in the show notes. And we'll get into that right
Living in Edgar Allan Poe's House
00:10:57
Speaker
now. So this question deals directly with it. How did you end up in Edgar Allan Poe's basement in a Bronx house?
00:11:06
Speaker
I end up there. That's a bit of a story. It was 2001. I had just moved back to the city and I was trying to find... I'd never lived here. I didn't move back. I was born here. I moved to the city, as anyone was looking for a job, looking for a living situation, and then through a series of unfortunate events, I lost both my jobs.
00:11:34
Speaker
a job working for a documentary filmmaker, I had a job working for a non-profit, and both just disappeared. It was unfortunate. And all of a sudden, and I had an apartment, so all of a sudden I had rent due, I had no work, and it was quite a desperate situation. So I was sitting in Dempsey's pub on the Bowery in 2001, and the Bowery was just starting to gentrify, but it was still the Bowery of New York old, like it was still run down
00:12:03
Speaker
fit my mood perfectly. And I just was sitting with some friends who were living at a place called the Catholic Worker, which was down the street, which was a an old depression error organization that helped the homeless. And so I was volunteering there and just fishing around for any work because it was a good place to ask for immediate work.
00:12:25
Speaker
And a gentleman, a friend of mine, turned to me and just said, oh yeah, I've got a job. If you want free rent for the rest of your life. And I said, yeah, of course. And he said, well, you have to live in the Bronx. And he told me all about Edgar Allan Poe's house up on the Grand Concourse. And I didn't believe him because, like most people, I associated Poe with Philadelphia and Baltimore. I had no idea that he had a cottage in the Bronx. And as soon as he said it, I said, yes, absolutely. I'm going to hunt this down.
00:12:55
Speaker
And so I found, I just made a daisy chain, I just connected, I found one person who knew somebody else and I got the current caretaker's phone number and I contacted him and it said I would love to come up and see it. So I was able to get, and then I got to the president of the Historical Society, which wasn't too hard. So I contacted, I moved so fast on it that I was able to get an interview almost before they put the ad in the New York Times.
00:13:23
Speaker
So I really got inside information. So that's basically, and then I interviewed for it, but they had me give, I had to collect seven references, which I've never had to do for any job. Seven references to ensure my stability, which was almost really funny, but they said that they had serious problems in the past, which they wouldn't tell me about, but they seem to imply that, you know, when you offer free rent in New York City,
00:13:52
Speaker
It's a big deal. People will come out in droves and not always be of the healthiest mindset. They had to ensure that I was a rational person. I pursued it aggressively as I have never pursued anything before. That's not true entirely, but I really just went after it because I said, this is it. This is what I have to do if I want to stay in New York. Plus, how many chances am I ever going to get
00:14:21
Speaker
for this kind of job. But I have to say, though, when I did, when I did finally see the house and found out what the job was, I did take pause a little bit. And my friends were like, you really want to live by yourself in the Bronx, in New York City, you know, you might, you might pull a Jack Torrance, you know, in The Shining, you might really go nuts, like this is because it was a very, very isolating place. But I love the Bronx. As soon as I moved in, I just thought,
00:14:50
Speaker
This is a wonderful place, and it really is. The Bronx gets a bad rap, but it is my favorite borough, obviously. What was that experience like when you first walked into the Poe House and you realized, wow, this is going to be my home for the next few years? It was wonderful because it was a huge educational experience, as well as thinking, wow, I could do this for a job, but just to know that
00:15:17
Speaker
that Poe lived there. It just filled a huge gap in my ignorance. I thought I knew a lot about Poe, but I knew nothing. At this time in the Bronx, it was the last three years of his life, and his wife died in the cottage. But it was, yeah, and the cottage has its own little city park. It's literally called Poe Park, and it's up on the Grand Concourse. And it was amazing because my mother's from the Bronx originally, so
00:15:45
Speaker
It was just, it's kind of like coming home, like my ancestral stomping grounds. So it kind of felt, it sounds cheesy to say, but it kind of felt like destiny. I'm like, well, this is really, so it was really kind of emotional cause she was born nearby. So, and she had all these old friends nearby. So I went to visit them and when they found out I was living in the Bronx, they were amazed. They were just like, wow, really? Why is he living in the Bronx? Like, cause most people would have gone to Brooklyn. Well, affordable rents were in 2001. So,
00:16:14
Speaker
no longer. Yeah. So what did you, as you started to become more educated about Edgar Allan Poe, what about his life and maybe his creative life and his writing life, did you maybe begin to internalize yourself and maybe apply to your own work? I tried to put him in, I finally understood his context. Like to me, he was
00:16:41
Speaker
wholly original. I think I read, like most people, I read the classics when I was in high school, Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, Annabel Lee. And I thought that he was, I mean, he really was the first American horror writer, for lack of a better pigeonhole, that's what he, but I, not only did I read Poe, but I started reading what he must have read, like all these 18th century Gothic novels.
00:17:09
Speaker
like Anne Radcliffe and a lot of the monk. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Matthew Lewis, his book, really wild Gothic European literature. Because he was basically aping the style of European Gothic literature. And I have no clue about that class of literature. And so I was able to put him in his global literary context.
00:17:38
Speaker
which made reading him all the richer, because I finally understood that he wasn't just plucking these stories out of his craw, he reinvented them for the American scene. So that was really, again, I had lots of time to read as a caretaker, so it was wonderful. I had these giant books, you know, those 18th century Gothic novels are not small, so I had lots of time to read
00:18:02
Speaker
And that was wonderful, like being able to see where he got the house of Usher. The telltale heart was also tremendous because I read that over and over. And I always used to joke with people that it was crime and punishment in a page and a half, minus the Catholic existentialism in Russian history, because Dostoevsky, I mean, I forgot that he predated Dostoevsky. So he got to all of this psychological realism
00:18:33
Speaker
Um, before so many, he was really, so that was wonderful to see that how many people he predated in American literature, like how many, not just the detective story, but just these, the getting inside the criminal's head.
00:18:48
Speaker
and having empathy for that evil criminal, yeah.
The Art of Storytelling and The Moth Experiences
00:18:53
Speaker
So how important was storytelling to you growing up and then through your adolescence and early 20s and as someone, having seen the moth stuff and read your essay in Creative Nonfiction, you get a sense that it's definitely a part of your fiber and your DNA. So where did that come from? Where did that love come from?
00:19:17
Speaker
And how important was it for you? I can't quite say if you know, the thing about the moth is that what I felt it did was for me was reawaken all those old instincts that I for some reason had buried. And I'm not alone in that. Like I've talked to there's a lot of my friends are from the moth and they talk about how the act of getting up and talking and telling a story
00:19:45
Speaker
for an audience just kind of reawakens this old drive that a lot of us have. Although it is, no doubt, it was a skill that we had to cultivate, telling a story live without notes, as they say in the tagline. So it was both an old instinct, but yet a skill that you had to reawaken or reinvent on the spot. You have to tell these stories. You may rehearse them beforehand.
00:20:15
Speaker
But it did make me think about, well, how, what was the role of storytelling in my, in my young life? And I can't say I came, you know, my parents were, were great storytellers. I mean, they, they were both, my father more so was in the, where they were in the clergy. My father was a, was a priest, Catholic priest before he, before he left.
00:20:37
Speaker
And so a homily in the middle of a Catholic mass, that's basically the storytelling. You'd lift the story from your life and you're related to whatever the readings are for the day. So my father, if anything, had that gift or he had that ability to tell a joke more than anyone else in my family. So that was a huge part to
00:21:03
Speaker
to realize that he got up in public and would have to talk a lot. And he was good at public speaking. Even though he's a very nervous guy, which I thought was very ironic. But once he got into the story, he was comfortable. And that's exactly how it is for me. I get nervous when I go up and I speak and I tell a story. I get nervous every time. And a lot of my friends do. But then once you get the story rolling,
00:21:30
Speaker
Once the audience reacts and you see they're enjoying it, then after that it's all vanilla after that. It's just wonderful.
00:21:38
Speaker
What was your preparation and practice looking like when you were, you know, you got green lit to do that. So how did you start working through it and just practicing to make sure that you were hitting your beats and just doing it in a fluid manner? You mean for the story,
00:22:01
Speaker
the story slams and just the moth stories in general? Yeah, exactly. It's a kind of, you know, oral storytelling that actually I haven't been able to speak to many people about on the podcast. So I'm just kind of fascinated about what your, what your process was like. You know what, because it's such a strict format, it's five, six minutes, right? And that when you're on stage, that feels long.
00:22:29
Speaker
But in reality, it's obviously very short. But my wife, my wife has been my first and final critic for all the moth stories, any story that I've told on stage. I mean, because you do have to rehearse it for somebody at some point. And I mean, you can talk to your plants and your cats, but that's not you know, you can, but you're always the most amusing person when you talk to yourself. So you have to so I really
00:22:57
Speaker
My wife, if she's around, I'll rehearse it for her, if she has the time to listen. And she always gives great notes. And I never write anything down until afterwards. I talk it out first, beat to beat, line to line. Because writing, when you write something down, I mean, I think five minutes on the page is, I don't know, it's a couple pages. It's different, obviously, when you write. You add more.
00:23:26
Speaker
when you write. And the object with a moth story is to add, you take out, you know, you don't, you cannot include every single detail. You have to focus on not just the right detail, but the most visceral detail, because a live audience is not going to react. It's not going to react to the same things. Whether if you're reading it off the page, it's quite different, enormously different. So you have to give the most visceral, the most physical, the most immediate details, which
00:23:56
Speaker
Sometimes when you're writing something on the page, it's a bit more diffuse. So it's a performance. And I have to remember that it's a performance. And so some moth storytellers, I know that they do write it down before they go up. And I can't imagine doing that. For me, it's I have to talk it out. Just talk for five minutes. And I know a lot. I have some stand up comics, friends who are stand up comics. And they have a similar process where they tell the joke.
00:24:27
Speaker
to a small group of people and they have to rehearse in front of a small group to see how the joke plays, to see how the delivery lands. It's all about the delivery. It's all about the line readings and not so much what's on the page. So yeah, but my wife, she has to be given credit for listening to me. And she's given me my best notes and she's like, change this, tweak that line here. Don't say that, you'll look like an idiot.
00:24:54
Speaker
And she's right, even if sometimes in the moment I don't agree with her.
00:24:59
Speaker
I have to call her afterwards and go, yep, honey, you were completely right. So to do that, so when you're preparing for that kind of storytelling, it's always the oral part first. You're not writing it and then trying to translate it for the ear. You're always thinking, this is spoken and performance. Does any point ever get written down?
00:25:24
Speaker
It does afterwards. Sometimes it does. If I really, really love the story, I will write it down verbatim. But you know what? It really changes tremendously. The Moth published a book of stories that had been on the podcast, and it was quite a success. And it's good to see them in print, but it really just changes when you see it on the page. And I don't quite know how to define it, but it is
00:25:53
Speaker
I prefer hearing and listening to the story because the human voice is so wonderful and not just that but the audience reaction is twofold. You're hearing the storyteller's voice but then you're hearing how much pleasure the audience is taking in that story. So you lose that obviously when it gets on the page because it becomes a more intimate one-on-one
00:26:17
Speaker
reading experience with with author with someone and but the whole performance aspect is it it allows for community allows for this enormous crowd to hear the story and it's it's quite a high rehearsing the story to five people is the most is actually terrifying telling the story to 300 500 people is not is not as bad as
00:26:41
Speaker
Ironically, I don't know why but rehearsing it because we have to go through a rehearsal process with the moth Especially with the main stage the producers get you together Everyone is performing and you and you rehearse it in front of each other and that's the hardest Because it's only five people and so you have to get if you can't you have to get a response out of five people and you have to written that's That's a lot harder and when you have a large audience the odds that
00:27:11
Speaker
someone's laughter will create a ripple effect. And the community effect will take place. But telling a story to five people is quite hard. But that's what you have to do. That's what we have to do when you do a main stage story. So what are you more attracted to? The spoken storytelling or written? What do you tend to gravitate more towards? You know, I've thought about this a lot.
00:27:41
Speaker
It's really, I wondered when I first started performing at the Moth, I wondered, oh, is this something I should pursue? Am I better at this than I am at writing? But for starters, it's rare that a person can make a living at live storytelling right now. It's not just as bad as writing. You're not gonna make a lot of money. So it's not as if I could build a career. I think Mike Daisy had it going on for a while. He was telling,
00:28:07
Speaker
But he's a theatrical person. Are you familiar with his work? Have you heard of him? I'm not. I just scribbled his name down for show notes and also for me to go back and check that out. Yeah, check him out. He was a performer, and he tells stories like Spalding Gray. Are you familiar with that name? Have you heard that name before? I'm going to have to say no. No. No, no, yeah, yeah. I've always loved introducing people to Spalding Gray.
00:28:36
Speaker
Spalding Ray sat at a desk and performed monologues for years and he was riveting and he had tried being a novelist and failed and then he found the theater and he found oral storytelling and he was far more compelling than he found. So I wondered if when I started doing the moth but
00:29:01
Speaker
I thought, well, you know, they're both the moth really saved me from my isolation as
Balancing Storytelling and Writing
00:29:07
Speaker
a writer. You know, you spend most of your days by yourself. And then so then to go out and be able to also do this and to perform with a group of people, because you're not just doing it alone. That's what you know, you're performing your story by yourself, but you meet a lot of weird and interesting people. And so to able to do both helps helps me with the writing when I go back to my desk.
00:29:30
Speaker
You know, it helps me to know that I can do this, that I am a storyteller. It's just obviously writing a novel or writing an essay is a completely different form. But I do, as a consequence of the moth, I do read my material out loud on the page more than I ever have. I actually perform it as if I'm doing the audio book, because I just need to know how it sounds.
00:29:56
Speaker
Do you do that? Definitely. In my own isolation, I definitely will read things out loud, even just to myself about this decibel level. I'll read it. It's almost more to see if I'm stumbling over words. If I'm stumbling over something, then it's just not going to read as nice and fluid. It's a way for me to iron out the wrinkles.
00:30:25
Speaker
Um, but then, yeah, then there are some words that just really crackle and you, you know, you really want to hear them out loud, but yeah, that's definitely, I definitely do that or read out loud and not necessarily with performance in mind, but it's definitely a way to, to just hear it and maybe hear it in the way a future reader is going to. And it's definitely a good way of vetting out a certain language and usage. Yeah. Yeah. You hear the repeated words, you hear the.
00:30:54
Speaker
you hear where the passive voice isn't really working. Yeah, you just hear all the clunks and it's really quite helpful. But in answer to your question, I don't know that I have a preference for either one right now. I mean, performing, I will say that performing a story takes a lot of energy. Even just a five, 10 minute story takes a great deal of energy.
00:31:19
Speaker
to do it right. I mean, I have done shows here in the city where I haven't rehearsed as much because the stakes aren't as high. And that's what the shows are for. They're just for working out material. But if you really want to do a story right and really work, just get it, workshop it until it's tight, that takes as much energy as writing an essay. So it's a matter of where do I want to put my energy. And right now, writing a book is
00:31:49
Speaker
is probably going to give me more of a career than live storytelling. But that said, again, there's a few venues here in the city that are looking for stories for Halloween and Christmas. And I always pitch them stories because I need to. I love performing. I love performing a story. So it's something I do need to do.
00:32:10
Speaker
Have you found that being able to get up on stage and perform these stories is a way of sort of almost focus grouping the resonance of a story so then you can say,
00:32:27
Speaker
I got all these laughs telling this five-minute story that's going to give me juice to write about it and do something longer. There's validation there. Do you find that you can get validation on the stage and that translates to your writing? That's interesting. I have translated some stories or rather expanded some of the stories that I've told into non-fiction pieces.
00:32:55
Speaker
Really its performance is all about the audience and what certainly one audience is gonna laugh at something another audience Will not laugh Just because of the makeup of the audience. It's very much like reading every reader is gonna react differently. So but I have worked I have I have come upon
00:33:18
Speaker
lines or improvised lines in performance that I will then sometimes try to integrate into a story that I'm writing but primarily I think the oral stories live on their own as oral stories and occasionally I'll take snippets or a scene or something from an oral story and put it into a piece of writing but only if it really
00:33:46
Speaker
Seems to work because again it is they do two different mediums and they're so radically different that what works on the stage doesn't always work on the page and vice versa so it's.
00:34:00
Speaker
It's really fascinating to see what works and what doesn't for both mediums. If you ever find that you're stuck in your writing, do you then think, oh, this is probably a good time for me to take a break from that and maybe do something that's more performance based? Does one break you out of one cycle and help stimulate the other? Yeah, occasionally it does. If I know that I have a performance coming up,
00:34:28
Speaker
It's actually a relief to do that and put aside the writing for a while. And it's also a relief to not make stuff up because I consider myself primarily a fiction writer. That's what I do. So the moth is great because I don't have to I don't have to lie as it were. You know, I don't have to create details. I just have to use my own life.
00:34:53
Speaker
I know there are, there are, the line is fuzzy sometimes with oral storytelling. People sometimes wonder about details, but I try not to, I compress time and stuff and I do, I could change names to protect the innocent, but I, that's the other bomb of the moth is that you don't have to make anything up. All the materials there are ready made. It's just a matter of shaping it into something that's going to translate to the stage. So,
00:35:22
Speaker
So yeah, it's again, it's a great relief not only to break out your isolation, but to tell a true story as opposed to making something up.
00:35:30
Speaker
it you you mentioned earlier about this uh... being in front being on the stage is kind of a being a part of this larger community and like breaks you out of that isolation and now i was i think it's real important to tend hit on that it that really if if if anyone's ever going to sort of quote-unquote make it in any art form it's really important to be uh... a member of something larger than your own little bubble
00:35:56
Speaker
Just how important is that for you to get you to be more, to put a public face on it and be a part of something greater than just your own work? Oh, it's again, it's huge. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. In fact, tonight I've been out of town for a while and tonight I'm going to go see to hang out with two buddies who I never would have met if it wasn't for them off and who both have amazing stories in their own right.
00:36:24
Speaker
that they're in the process of telling in various forms.
Community and Teaching Methods
00:36:28
Speaker
So the minute you become part of the moth group, or not just the moth, but the storytelling scene, yeah, you jump outside of yourself because you're also listening. That's the other component. I mean, you tell your story for five minutes, five, 10 minutes, but then you sit there and listen to another 45 minutes of stories that aren't your own. And there are amazing people
00:36:52
Speaker
who tells stories at the Moth. There are astronauts and cops. There's a guy named Steve Osborne who told stories with the Moth in the early days, who's a former New York police officer and just has amazing funny tales. Lots of my friends have come from the storytelling community and it's just wonderful. It is wonderful to be a bigger, yeah, to be something bigger than yourself. And it should be said, I guess, that it's also,
00:37:21
Speaker
There's nothing it's there's nothing really at stake except bragging rights with the storytelling community I mean, no one's getting rich off of this, you know, you're not gonna get a book contract necessarily That's you're just up there sharing stories and it's just a wonderful Wonderful feeling it's not it's not the same I've had again I have friends who do stand-up comedy and stand-up comedy notoriously is very You know, it's a lot more brutal and cutthroat Not so
00:37:52
Speaker
with storytelling. There's obviously something very different about it. I mean, there are, of course, when you're in New York City, people will always make it competitive and nasty. But to me, it's always, I've gotten great friendships.
00:38:05
Speaker
When you were at Avenues, how did you develop the hip of high-intensity practice? Practice? Yeah, define that for people who might not know what it's about. It's a piece that you wrote for Creative Nonfiction, the writer at work section. How did you come to write this essay, but also that particular practice? Well, it should be said that I did not create hip.
00:38:35
Speaker
I'm sorry, that didn't come across, but my supervisor, the man who hired me, Todd Shai, who was the man who developed this method of teaching young people. I came in along with two other staff members, and there were two other people. There were a total of five of us. We were a team.
00:38:57
Speaker
Our job was to just make sure that we kept it going and that the school could see that it was something that the students were benefiting from. And we looked, I think, and definitely for the article, I made sure I tried to see if there was something else like it in the country. And my boss, Todd, wasn't aware of it. He had developed it on his own. He was a writer himself.
00:39:26
Speaker
and thought that it was just, yeah, no grades, no homework, just come in and have the students play. So he really needs to be given the credit for development. Although the team that we had, we came up with prompts. We had to come up with new prompts.
00:39:43
Speaker
for a whole year worth of work. So that in itself itself was a challenge. But that was also tremendous fun just to come up with stuff, test prompts out that students would react to that. So HIP, I mean, Todd's whole imperative with HIP, and I believe I said this in the article was to cultivate empathy, flexibility, cognitive
00:40:07
Speaker
you know, thinking. So students could make these sudden leaps and right from the point of view of their cell phone, for instance, give them permission to do something that crazy, or right from the point of view of their least favorite relative on the holidays, just try and get them thinking, to use a cliche thinking outside the box, but also to do it in 20 minutes. And you know, don't think, just do it, come in. And so there's an actually so teaching
00:40:37
Speaker
It was kind of a misnomer. When you're teaching hip, you don't really teach per se in the traditional sense. Students had notebooks, but they have for the whole year. And you only had 45 minutes or so, which is quite a challenge to settle people down. But once they got the prompt and brought them in, sat them down, maybe did 10 minutes of prep, but then said, OK, right from the point of view of a stone on the beach or
00:41:06
Speaker
you know, write about, you know, you give them the prompt and they would just write for 20, 25 minutes. And then we'd go around and read first lines, see if people and people generally love doing that. And then I'd read the notebooks that day. And then the following class, I would select one or two students to read aloud if their essay was particularly good. So that was a, that's basically the format. Does that make sense? Is that clear? Yeah.
00:41:31
Speaker
What's great about it, it's kind of like we were talking about earlier with Debuse's 17 minutes in his truck, and it also talks about, or alludes to this Parkinson's law, I think it is, like the task will swell to fill the time you give it. So like even if you gave them three hours, they might not get as much work done in three hours as they do in 20 minutes. So like when you set the egg timer for 20 minutes, it's kind of amazing how much work you can get done.
00:41:59
Speaker
in a short amount of time if you just really drill down. Yeah, and that's how I've basically, I think anyone who writes in the modern age has, you know, when you have a schedule and you know you have a set amount of time to write, that you have no choice but you have to write, you only have 17 minutes near a graveyard, you've only got 20 minutes or an hour, sometimes that's better than having
00:42:25
Speaker
all the free time in the world you know if you have too much time sometimes you get lax about it so if you have you know you have a focused period of time in which to do your work it's amazing what comes out because then you're really harnessing the subconscious which is where all the good stuff is anyway so that's what we're teaching these kids basically how to we didn't tell them that but that's what we were basically teaching them to to harness their deep deep subconscious and they would have that experience of like of of
00:42:55
Speaker
of not remembering why they wrote something, which was really fun. Yeah.
Wally Lamb's Influence and Writing Persistence
00:43:02
Speaker
And now you also allude to the writing lab that you took while you were in high school with Wally Lam before he blew up into a bestselling author. What was that experience like? Yeah, that was pretty seminal. He was, yeah, that was freshman year of high school.
00:43:20
Speaker
And this was right before he published his first novel. He had a writing lab and it was literally just a room with computers and typewriters and Apple II GS's where students would literally just do exactly what we're doing and hip, just come in and play with writing. No grades that I remember. I'm pretty sure there were no grades. It was just a place, it was kind of an adjunct to the English classes. Far more fun though.
00:43:50
Speaker
And he would allow us to just play with words, fiction and nonfiction. But the most crucial moment that I always remember from that experience was he, I don't know if I said this in the piece, but he read a piece of mine out loud. And again, it wasn't that it was my piece per se, but just that I had never heard a piece read out loud. He read lots, he read everyone's work out loud.
00:44:19
Speaker
But when he took my words and read them out loud and watching people react, it was kind of like a prototype for what the moth did. And he treated them with respect and reverence. He wasn't grading them. He wasn't critiquing them. He would just say, listen to this. Listen to how this sounds. What do you think? And it was phenomenal. That moment stayed with me all throughout my
00:44:46
Speaker
My writing has sad stayed with me all throughout my writing career. He was a very, still is a very generous man, very generous, very humble, and very, just a wonderful guy, very, very honest. And yeah, he can, he's that with that. So that, and I can't imagine my high school, that was the best part of high school. You know, high school is traumatic enough, but his writing lab was
00:45:15
Speaker
That and cross-country running were the only things that got me through high school. There were just these phenomenal places where you felt safe. You felt like you weren't going to be punished for having the wrong grades or saying the wrong thing. I'm so happy. Then he published the book. He got the contract, I think,
00:45:39
Speaker
By the time we were seniors, he had had the book had come out. So he gave the graduation speech and it was just, it was wonderful to see him. He was a model too, for what persistence of writing, because he had been working on that book for eight years or so. It was kind of this mythology that traveled among the faculty. Like people knew that Wally was writing a book. Yeah. What book was that? What was the date? She's Come Undone. Okay. Was his first book.
00:46:09
Speaker
And it got published and then came out. And then I think a year later, Oprah picked it for her book club. And that's really what kind of put him over the top was that she picked it and he suddenly overnight was being read by millions of people. So it was wonderful to see because this, you know, you could see, you saw that it could happen. Like somebody could be laboring for years
00:46:38
Speaker
and on something mysterious called the novel and then all of a sudden everyone was going to read it. So it was really quite nice to see that early example because up until then writing had been pretty abstract. I'd read books but I'd never actually met
00:46:56
Speaker
an author, someone who actually did it. Yeah, it's like something or someone gets anointed, it's something that other people do and then to see it so close to home from someone that you knew personally, it kind of like, I don't know, it almost granted you a greater sense of permission to pursue it because you can almost reach out and touch it, if that makes any sense. No, it absolutely did.
00:47:25
Speaker
And to know not only that, but to know that he'd been doing it for a while without any kind of material gain. It was just something he needed to do. And he stayed true to it. He had a family. He was teaching high school, for God's sake. So I can't imagine his time was that he had a lot of time. But he did it.
00:47:51
Speaker
And when I published my first short story, I wrote him a note and basically just gushed and said, you know, one of the reasons I've kept writing. And he just wrote back a wonderful letter and wrote, you know, persistence. Just remember, persistence. You're going to go up and down. There's going to be a lot of hills and valleys. Enjoy the ride. But just remember, persistence counts for a lot.
00:48:19
Speaker
that too has stayed with me because it's absolutely
00:48:23
Speaker
True. Oh man, persistence is truly 90% of the game. It will be, in the long game, it'll be talent. It's, you know, that God given talent. But yeah, there has to be the kernel of talent, but geez, without endurance and persistence. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it is, it's a bloodbath. It is a bloodbath. And now more than ever, because there's so many more people
00:48:51
Speaker
Making noise, you know, and so you have to break through that somehow, but but then again, it's like, you know, you just have to go all the way. This Charles Bukowski has a poem, I think, where he says go all the way, no matter what. So it's
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure you've experienced that. You just have to get up every day and do it. Yeah, it took me 10 years of submitting essays to Creative Nonfiction before I landed an essay in there. What was your first piece? It was just a couple issues ago. It was the Gentleman's Guide to Arousal Free Slow Dancing.
00:49:28
Speaker
It's a great title. It was about my middle school dinner dance and how it was like everyone's first sort of semi-formal dance and everyone's apprehension was just springing wood on the dance floor.
00:49:44
Speaker
So that sounds familiar. Yeah, exactly. So that was, you know, that was the first for the joy themed issue. And so it was just like about just my wonderful experience of having, you know, conquered my apprehension, but also got to dance with the girl that I wanted to dance with all year. Yeah, that's phenomenal. I have to check. Are you, do you consider yourself primarily a nonfiction writer? Yeah, almost.
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah, almost exclusively. But I do noodle around with fiction because just for my own fun because I find that writing or at least practicing fiction, I start to think like, oh, how can I sort of elicit this little imaginative thing and make it verifiably true? What kind of questions can I be asking my willing characters to elicit that kind of mood that I could just dream up?
00:50:44
Speaker
So it kind of like helps open up my interviewing and my question asking and my observational sort of tool box to, yeah. Yeah. It's really wonderful, isn't it? How these different muscles like help with the other muscles, just everything you do.
00:51:02
Speaker
with fiction can help with nonfiction and vice versa. Yeah, I do find that noodling around with fiction, like when I'm writing with a pencil and a notebook for that, I tend to get more lost in that. Like time does really kind of stand still for that. I have a little more fun with that. And before I know it, like an hour has gone by and I just I didn't even know it. And my pencil is down to a nub. I was like, oh, wow. Wow. That happened.
00:51:29
Speaker
You're in the zone. That's what happens. Yeah. So what are what are some like maybe like three to five books that are really influential for you or books that you you love to you reread over and over again or give to people, you know, really influential books, novels or nonfiction, whatever that may be. I've got a couple I well, one of the most influential
00:51:56
Speaker
I'm a huge fantasy buff. I dream about writing a fantasy because it's so difficult to write.
Influential Reads and Artistic Influences
00:52:03
Speaker
But as a kid growing up, I read Tolkien, of course. But one of the most influential authors that I've ever read would be Ursula K. Le Guin, who is, I think, a part of, yeah, she lives in Oregon, I believe, right? She lives in Portland. So she is, I read the Earthsea books
00:52:24
Speaker
And I've read everything she's written, but the Earthsea books in particular, to me, are phenomenal examples of books that they marry literary ambitions, quote unquote, with genre.
00:52:41
Speaker
writing, for lack of a better word. I mean, she's been, she's been, for years she was placed like in the, what they call the genre ghetto, which is this unfair realm where they put people who write about dragons and beasts. But now I think that those walls have come, have started to crumble. And she, to me, she's, she's, she, it's like the writer I've been waiting for. She wrote about, she writes about peace and she writes about, she has ideas and her books are so succinct. I mean, fantasy books,
00:53:12
Speaker
She doesn't write like Game of Thrones size door stops. Like she just writes these really 200 page brilliant novels that encompass so many ideas in a fantasy realm. And it's just the way I just always refer her. For people who don't like fantasy, I always refer Ursula K. Le Guin.
00:53:34
Speaker
because she's a lot of fun and yet just brilliant, absolutely brilliant way to dramatize ideas subversively, like in a way that's, you know. So that's, I mean, she's the, I've given her books to a lot of people and they've never, I've yet to have someone, yeah, I've yet to have anyone come back and say she's awful. Earthsea is, I don't know if you've read them, but they're charming. They're just absolutely charm on impact, I find.
00:54:03
Speaker
And what other books do you find yourself rereading? I have one of the books I'm actually looking right at. Are you familiar with Lewis Hyde? No. You're familiar with him? Oh, if you write nonfiction, I discovered him a few years back. He is phenomenal. His most famous book is called The Gift, which you may have seen around. But the book that I have his that I read
00:54:29
Speaker
He's got a book called trickster makes the world trickster makes this world and it's all about the trickster motif Mischief myth and art and he goes through a lot of cultural traditions And and engine into the modern world and he talks about the trickster Ideal like he talks about coyote and raven and then he talks about all people he talks about Allen Ginsburg and Frederick Douglass and Picasso and
00:54:58
Speaker
and how they just upended the apple cart with their work. It's a book that is, I highly recommend it for anyone. David Foster Wallace called him one of the true superstars of non-fiction. And he just, he makes connections the way that Joseph Campbell made connections back in the 70s with the Hero of a Thousand Faces, like just traces traditions throughout various cultures and makes them alive for the modern reader.
00:55:27
Speaker
So yeah, he's got a book. So that's my favorite book of his that I always give to people. But the gift is called the gift imagination in the erotic life of property. And he read his most recent book, I think was one about the commons common is air, I think is the name of it, about our, you know, our shared commons that we have, artistically and politically. So he's, in terms of nonfiction, he's
00:55:54
Speaker
He's the one I keep by my bedside, as well as a book called Silences by Tilly Olsen, which I just recently discovered. And that's a harrowing book. I keep it by my bedside as a reminder. Tilly Olsen was a depression-era housewife. She had to drop out of high school to support her family during the depression. So, Josie talks about
00:56:19
Speaker
silences, the way that working class or women or people of color were often in the early, you know, very much and still not given as many opportunities to write, you know, we take it for granted that we have time to write. But she outlines various ways that a lot of voices were silenced just because of domestic duties. And so I keep that book by myself by my bedside to remind myself how much times have changed
00:56:48
Speaker
but also just how lucky I am to be able to do this.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like if you're feeling a bit, you know, just sort of, uh, sort of just dry and spent and it becomes a little too laborious to, to, to write anything or it just feels like, what do you, what do you do to, to recharge? I guess physical activity, getting off my butt and doing something physical and not thinking about writing at all. So going on a hike.
00:57:34
Speaker
Like last I know last week I was in the mountains hiking in the white mountains in New Hampshire That it never fails to restore me. I practice Shaolin kung fu here in the city and that You will not think about writing at all when you were practicing a martial arts when the masters they're telling you to get your form together so that I do things that I do physical activity keeps me in shape and
00:58:03
Speaker
I think I read some somewhere early on in my career, I read an article that said as a writer, you're obviously not going to have health care, so you better keep yourself healthy and stay in shape. And I thought, wow, that's amazingly practical advice today. So that's I do. I go for a run. I go for a hike in the woods. And that always never fails to once I leave my desk.
00:58:26
Speaker
I can always feel my mind, because if you stay at your desk too long, you calcify. So yeah, physical activity. Get up and move. And what are some other artistic media that you like to consume, other than writing or reading, that helps inform the work you do? Well, I think, like a lot of people, I think I love the direction that narrative television has taken.
00:58:56
Speaker
in terms of getting out of your head, like it's just wonderful to watch something develop episodically over a period of time. So obviously I do watch a bit of television, but I also love, I just, I love going to a talk, listening to somebody else, like a scholar, if someone's giving a talk, I listened to, there's tons of stuff to choose from or go to a gallery in the city, but something,
00:59:26
Speaker
Yeah, anything to get me outside of my own head. But listen to music, obviously that music is huge. I listen to Leonard Cohen a lot. So anything to snap me out of my narcissistic mindset, get me out of my head. But music is a big one. I mean, music is really, I do music and house chores. That's when I do all the, I clean the dishes or whatever I have to do.
00:59:54
Speaker
I put in a podcast or I put in an album and I'm happy. I listen to somebody else's poetry. It's always a good thing.
01:00:06
Speaker
If you add to, if there's someone who's a teenager, early 20s, mid-20s, and from your vantage point, if they were looking for a little bit of guidance or advice, and they want to achieve something, they want to achieve that high level of visibility that we all want with our work, what are some things you might tell him or her about deconstructing their apex goal? Their ambition.
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, and deconstructing that and how might you practically tell them to go about that?
01:00:40
Speaker
So you mean like to become a writer or to literally become visible in the media landscape? I guess well to become visible as a writer. Yeah like if they wanted to say perform on the moth stage or write for the New Yorker like something really big but then it's also it's really too big to look at it once but if you start breaking down and digesting the steps there can be a logical progression. Well I always
01:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, I used to teach creative writing classes, fiction classes at Hunter. And I would get this question my students would ask me like, what they could do. And I, I, I always say, well, the first thing you need to do is, is live, you need to get out there and live, which sounds very abstract, but I wouldn't have any stories to tell at the moth if I didn't grab life, you know,
01:01:37
Speaker
Firmly and and do and you know and it becomes a cliche, you know But I always say to young people, you know before you become committed or tied down to a job or a Relationship that you don't want to let go of like just you know do something wild and crazy You don't have to travel the world when I was young I thought I had to be Jack London or Jack Kerouac and so I would set out Doing dangerous things like hitchhiking You don't have to do obviously do things like that. But I I mean I
01:02:06
Speaker
You have to really live a life in order to tell stories. So you really need to, you need to do things.
Advice for Aspiring Writers
01:02:13
Speaker
You need to not think so much about your visibility so much as your, who you are. You really, which again, sounds really abstract and it's hard to define. I mean, anyone can put up a website and promote yourself, but you have to have something that's worth writing about. And the only way to do that is if you live an honest and true
01:02:36
Speaker
Existence if you're doing what you want to do in your waking life, you know, so you're That's really what I tell them is it you just have to live you really just have to live and do things besides writing There's always a great story by Laurie Moore on how to be a writer and I think the first word is the first sentences first try to be first try to be something else anything else an astronaut and
01:03:04
Speaker
Something you know, it's this really funny opening line and I tell them that too I was like don't you know don't if you Feel more drawn towards because some people feel they have this crazy feeling that they have to be a writer But but it makes them unhappy To do it and there's a difference between that and you know, those of us who keep pummeling away, you know, there's no you're not always happy but ultimately you you know, if you're not if you're not happy, which again would seem obvious and
01:03:33
Speaker
But I encountered so many students who were doing it, and they were miserable. And they had much more fun playing music or something like that. And I said, well, you don't have to write. So ironically enough, sometimes the advice is, when you're young, you have all these ideas in your 20s about who you have to be. But again, when I was in my 20s, I don't know that I had an image of what a writer looked like. I just knew that I had to
01:04:04
Speaker
I had to collect stories. I had to go out and get hurt. Get my heart broken a few times before I could even imagine to have something worth writing about. If that makes any sense, I don't know. That's kind of abstract answer. So what still excites you about the storytelling, whether it be spoken or the written word? What still brings you back to it over and over again?
Future of Storytelling and Closing Remarks
01:04:33
Speaker
So there's all this hysteria about the print media going away and you'd think this would be the last profession on earth that anyone would get into. But what keeps me coming back is that incessant need we have for storytelling. Again, it sounds like a cliche to say that.
01:04:56
Speaker
people that the need to have some kind of a narrative, the need to listen to something, podcasts, which as I'm sure you know are huge, like the podcast, boom. And I think the storytelling, the fictional podcasts that are being produced are we're just barely scratching the surface of what the medium can do. So that gets me excited, like what's happening in the in the podcast realm, but also just with a lot of small presses that are doing great work. So
01:05:26
Speaker
reading keeps and all the reading I do gets me excited and brings me back and every time someone talks about this so maybe I'm living in a bubble I don't know but I suspect not because we still have this insane desire for not insane but this incessant need for narrative the way our brains are wired so that I do you know that that keeps me going
01:05:53
Speaker
Well friends, we've made it through another glorious episode of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Thanks again to Hippo Campus Magazine for promotional support. Be sure to check out the wonderful work Donna Talarico and her team are doing over there. Also at Donna Talarico, she was on the podcast episode 65. Check that out.
01:06:12
Speaker
Again, I ask that you share this, and any episode of the podcast on your social feeds, leave a nice short review on iTunes and subscribe to my monthly newsletter. You get my book list and podcast news for the month. Once a month, no spam. Gotta dig it. If you hurry, you'll get the next one on October 1st, and may the riff be with you.